Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 95

Price Realized: $ 219
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 400
(CIVIL WAR--PENNSYLVANIA.) Meade, Margaretta S. General Meade's wife solicits a model of the "Swamp Angel" battery for a fair. Autograph Letter Signed to Colonel William W.H. Davis of the 104th Pennsylvania Infantry. 2 pages, 8 x 5 inches, on a folding sheet of Great Central Fair letterhead; mount remnants on final blank page, one small tape repair. Philadelphia, 27 May 1864

Additional Details

Margaretta Sargent Meade (1814-1886), wife of General George Meade, was involved in the planning for a charity fair on behalf of the United States Sanitary Commission. Here she responds to an offer from an officer stationed on James Island in South Carolina, home of the famous Swamp Angel battery--an 8-inch Parrott cannon which had bombarded Charleston in 1863 and was immortalized in a poem by Herman Melville. "Thank you for the model of the Swamp Angel which you propose sending to the Exhibition of Arms & Trophies of the Great Central Fair. It will be a great addition to our collection, and is rendered more interesting by the account you are kind enough to send with it." With--a salt print photograph of Margaretta Meade, 5 1/2 x 4 inches, mounted on plain paper.