Spring Auction 2018
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/26/2018
COLONEL ELLSWORTH AUTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY HIS FATHER.
This is an incredible piece since it is from the father of one martyr to the son of another!
Dated Mechanicsville, New York, June 16, 1873. Letter from E.D. Ellsworth to John Brown, Jr., complying with his request for an autograph of his martyred son. Ellsworth attached a clipped signature (from "his writing book when a child") to the letter.
Elmer Ellsworth (1837-1861) was an ambitious young man whose rise to prominence was cut short on May 24, 1861 when he became the first Union soldier killed in the Civil War.
He grew up in Illinois and studied law in Chicago where he also mustered the Cadet Attachment to the 60th Illinois Militia. A Springfield attorney named Abraham Lincoln hired young Ellsworth as a clerk in 1860, and Ellsworth followed Lincoln to Washington in 1861. Shortly thereafter, he moved to New York and raised the 11th New York Volunteers, modeling their training, and their uniforms, on the Algerian and French troops fighting in North Africa, called the Zouaves. Having recruited firemen for his unit, Ellsworth nicknamed them the Fire Zouaves.
On May 24, 1861, Ellsworth and his Fire Zouaves began their occupation of Alexandria, Virginia. There they encountered a large Confederate flag hanging over the Marshall House inn. In Ellsworth's determined attempt to take down the flag, he was gunned down by innkeeper James Jackson, who was promptly killed by Zouave Corporal James Brownell. Ellsworth immediately became a martyr for the Union cause, inspiring songs and poetry, and a nation of patriotic souvenir-collectors began seeking out photographs and autographs of the fallen soldier
Extremely Rare COLONEL ELLSWORTH AUTOGRAPH sent by father to JOHN BROWN Jr.
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