Lot 1385
Confederacy, General Joseph Reid Anderson, cover addressed entirely in his hand to his wife, "Mrs. Joseph R. Anderson, Mount Joy, near Pattonsburg [now Buchanan], Bot. Co., Va.", franked with a 5¢ blue (4) tied by blue Richmond c.d.s., Jun 4, 1862, Very Fine.
Estimate $400 - 600
Anderson was commissioned a brigadier general on September 3, 1861, but was wounded at Frayser's Farm on June 30, 1862 (a few weeks after this letter). He resigned his commission on July 16 and served the Confederate war effort in the Ordnance Department until the end of the war. As an industrialist, Anderson owned the Tredegar Iron Company, a major source of munitions and ordnance for the Confederate States Army. During the evacuation of Richmond on the night of April 2-3, 1865, as the retreating Confederate troops burned munitions dumps and industrial warehouses that would have been valuable to the North, Anderson is believed to have paid over fifty armed guards to protect his Tredegar facility from arsonists. As a result, the Tredegar Iron Works is one of the few Civil War era buildings in the warehouse district that survived the burning of Richmond.
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| Realized $350 |
