1864-5 Letter & Order Book - 500+ Pages - Capt. Wing U.S. QM Dept. Ga. & N.C

Description: 1864-5 Letter and Order Book of Union Capt. & Asst. Quartermaster Joseph Knowles Wing. Bound volume containing over 500 carbon copies of letters, orders, and other reports and official correspondence. Joseph Knowles Wing (1810-1898) enlisted 12 May 1862 as a Captain and Assistant Quartermaster in the U.S. Volunteers Quartermaster's Dept. He was promoted Major by Brevet on 13 March 1865, and that same day, further promoted to Lt. Col. by Brevet. He was mustered out on 10 August 1865. The earliest copies in the book date to April 1864. At that time, Capt. Wing was attached to the Left Wing of the 16th Army Corps. The 16th Corps was organized Dec. 1862, and in 1864 was divided into two wings of two divisions each. The Left Wing, led by Maj. Gen. Granville Dodge, participated in Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. It's divisions fought notably at the Battle of Atlanta on 22 July 1864, holding off Confederate General John Bell Hood's flank attack. Most of the book's pages have printed numbers at the top right corner. Pages 128-248 were written in Georgia between 17 July 1864 and 10 Oct. 1864. Locations include: "In the Field, Roswell, Ga."; "In the Field, Ga."; "Before Atlanta, Ga."; and "Atlanta, Ga." The Left Wing of the 16th Corps. was discontinued 23 Sept. 1864, and its divisions were reassigned. Pages 254-501 were written from Newbern, North Carolina between 16 March 1865 and 30 June 1865. In a 15 May 1865 letter (Page 329), Wing notified Capt. J.A. Judson, A.A.G., that in compliance with an 1864 General Order from Headquarters, District of N.C., "I was assigned to duty as Acting Chief Quartermaster District North Carolina ... and that I am now in performance of said duties." The book contains carbon copies of the original documents, not separately-handwritten duplicate copies. English inventor Ralph Wedgewood (1799-1837) invented the earliest form of carbon paper, a method of creating duplicate paper documents, which he called "stylographic writer"; Wedgewood obtained a patent for his invention in 1806. This method produced copies at the time of writing and relied on ink-impregnated paper, which Wedgewood called "carbonated paper." I found an online article explaining this method. (See next to last image). As it explains, a metal stylus (not a pen) was used, and a copy is read by looking through the thin paper at the mirror-image produced on the reverse. The book and its contents are in very good condition, just showing age and expected wear from handling and use. Please inspect all images carefully. The last image is a CDV photograph of Capt. Wing that I found on Ancestry.

Price: 395 USD

Location: Greensboro, North Carolina

End Time: 2025-01-12T05:41:35.000Z

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