Nov 29, 2012 - Sale 2296

Sale 2296 - Lot 49

Price Realized: $ 960
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
"I OUGHT TO HAVE DIED YEARS AGO" SHERMAN, WILLIAM T. Autograph Letter Signed, "W.T. Sherman," to Marion Stewart Terry, reporting that his youngest sister Fanny Moulton has died, promising nevertheless to keep the appointment with her, and longing to escape city life for the quiet of the Rocky Mountains. 3 1/2 pages, large 8vo, written on a single folded sheet, ruled paper; short separations at folds; matted with a portrait in a double-sided frame. With the original envelope. New York, 21 February [1889: from postmark]
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"My sister Mrs. Moulton died this 9:30 PM. . . . [T]omorrow I have with you an engagement . . . . notwithstanding I will keep this Engagement with you, although I may have to come . . . in my funeral carriage.
"I have been for hours making telegraphic messages to places at the West, announcing this death . . . . I must accompany the funeral train to the cars and may be a little late. Therefore keep a place for me, and I will fill it before the dinner is finished. . . . [P]lease do not think me unfeeling . . . . Fanny Moulton was . . . . our youngest sister--No. 11 in a family of that number. She . . . has children and grandchildren who will love her memory even more than her brothers and sisters. . . . .
"Of course I ought to have died years ago. Now I find myself in New York, with hundred of promises, weddings, dinner parties and funerals, that I may have to escape to the Rocky Mountains where an old veteran may live in comparative peace. . . ."