?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(WEST.) A satirical message of thanks to a military post trader on the Wyoming frontier. 2 printed pages, 8 1/2 x 6, on one sheet; apparently excised from a volume, minor wear and moderate soiling. Fort D.A. Russell, WY: Private Hall, Eighth U.S. Infantry [1873 or 1874]
This message is directed to "Mr. Woolley and gentlemen," James D. Wooley being the post trader at Fort D.A. Russell. The author thanks Wooley for his Civil War service, when he was willing to "buckle on your cheese-knife, and go forth with self-denying intrepidity, to sell crackers, cheese and whiskey to your brothers in the Army of the Potomac." Regarding that whiskey, he notes that "a few scarred veterans still survive who commenced upon it in '61," and credits the Confederate defeat to their capture of a wagon train of the whiskey. This appears to be an early Wyoming imprint. It can be readily dated because the 8th United States Infantry was only at this fort from 1873 to 1874. The American Imprints Inventory has the first Wyoming printing as 1866, and lists only 18 imprints through 1874, with none known at this fort before 1880.
