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THBDakota Territory Medical Director C.C. Byrne, 1875 ALS Referencing Custer
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Cincinnati , OH 45232
United States
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About Auction
LiveSep 8, 2017 - Sep 9, 2017
Cowan's Auctions dawnie@cowans.com
View Full Catalog (427)
- Lot Description
Byrne, Charles (1837-1921). Surgeon United States Army. ALS, 4pp, 8.5 x 5.5 in., "Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory." June 12, 1875. Written to Mrs. Nicoll.
From the bloody Civil War battlefields at Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, and Nashville, former Surgeon General of the Army Charles Christopher Byrne suddenly found himself far from home, away from the action, and stationed in the middle of nowhere. "I am in the midst of vast uninhabited country whose treeless hills and scanty vegetation are not at all suggestive of Bayside," he complained. "I do not know how I will like this station."
Byrne was the medical director of Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. He described his post further as a "bleak—cold—isolated place in the winter" with no railroad and only two mail deliveries a month. Stationed at the same post, however, was General George Custer, who Byrne briefly mentions as the commanding officer of the garrison. Even though the fort seemed like a desolate outpost to Byrne, it was a rather large post and boasted 78 permanent wooden structures including a post office, telegraph office, barracks for nine companies, seven officer's quarters, six cavalry stables, a guardhouse, granary, quartermaster storehouse, bakery, hospital, laundress quarters, and log scouts' quarters.
A year after Byrne's letter, Custer left the fort to fight in the Great Sioux War, which resulted in Custer's defeat and death at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Custer and half his troops did not return to the fort. The army abandoned it in 1891 and local residents took the wood in order to build their own homes. The Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt it for tourism purposes and reconstructed Custer's original home at the fort.
Condition
Typical folds of the letter and light toning.
Sword loose. Some cracks and chips to marble.
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