Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 112

Price Realized: $ 1,820
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
WITH A MOVING DESCRIPTION OF A BLACK CHURCH SERVICE IN VIRGINIA (CIVIL WAR--OHIO.) Letters to and from Private James Johnson of the 138th Ohio Infantry. 22 letters, condition generally strong, most with full typed transcripts. Various places, May-December 1864
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Additional Details

James Oliver Johnson (1832-1902), a farmer of Cherry Grove, OH was one of 15,000 Ohio National Guardsmen called up for 3 months of active duty in May 1864 with the 138th Ohio. This lot contains 3 letters Johnson sent home to his wife, plus 19 letters he received in 1864, mostly from his wife and siblings in Cherry Grove.

Johnson's 29 May letter was written shortly after his arrival in Washington. The other two were written during this company's occupation of Drummondtown (Accomac) on Virginia's Eastern Shore on the Delmarva Peninsula. On 1 August he wrote: "Yesterday I went out from camp a short distance to a meeting held by the Negros and such a meeting I have not witnessed. These people have no particular form of worship, but pray and talk and sing as they feel like it, and truly Israel's God was with them in their desoltins. The big tear would steal down their cheeks as they bowed in prayer or sang hyms of prayse. I was struck with the remarkable intelligence of many of their prayers and speeches as they had neither Bible nor hymn book, yet they would give out hymns of real merit and quote many passages from the scriptures."

His 9 August letter describes some exotic gifts (not included here): "I was out on the ocean and got some shells which I will try and send you. . . . They are not verry nice but are novel as bein from the sea shorre." He concluded bitterly, "If spared to get home I never will leave your side again. I feel that we have been deceived and scared into this service, but if I can but get through it without the loss of my health I shall be a better man."

WITH--3 post-war letters to Johnson dated 1866-95, and 3 items relating to his death in 1902.