Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 104

Price Realized: $ 358
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(IOWA.) Joseph Yantz. Letters from a young fur trapper in frontier Wisconsin and Iowa. 5 Autograph Letters Signed to various family members; most with partial separations at folds, one worn with slight loss of text. Vp, December 1859 to September 1860

Additional Details

Joseph Yantz (circa 1840-1862) was raised in eastern Wisconsin. The first of these letters is written from Ridgeville in western Wisconsin, begun on 26 December 1859. He inquires about some friends who "were going up to Black River Falls trapping" and reports that he plans tomorrow to "set some traps if it is a good day." He reports that friend Hiram "don't have any thing to do now days. . . . He said that he would camp with the Indians, there is plenty of them." On 6 January, he was a few miles westward in Wilton, WI , telling his sister "you wanted me to save all the white weasle skins for you, well I have got 2 now."
The next 3 letters were written from his new home in rural Castalia in the northeastern corner of Iowa in mid-1860. His 1 April letter describes his principal occupations as "trapping & kissing the pretty girls," adding that near Cedar River he had "caught all the mink & beaver & ottar, rats & everything. . . . Every boddy else has got the start of us this spring. bout two weeks ago we got an ottar in one of our traps & he got away with the trap." His 8 July letter describes the construction of a ballroom in his small town; he seems to have settled down to farm work. His 2 September letter speculates that he might go "up north in the cranberry marsh & pick berries & kill bear & deer. . . . We could make from 2 to 10 dollars per day if we could pick berries enough." Yantz soon enlisted in the Union army and died of wounds suffered at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862.
With--2 other family letters, 1864 and undated; a recipe for salve signed by J. Yantz; and 11 postal covers (2 bearing stamps and Wisconsin postmarks).