Beschreibung:

Lot of 58 war-date letters totaling approximately 170 pages. Thirty-six letters were written by Private Andrew H. Gale to his family during his enlistment with the NY 137 Infantry regiment. Gale's diary for the year 1863, 3.25 x 6 inches, accompanies the soldier's letters. Content includes references to Battles of Wauhatchie, Lookout Mountain, Mission Ridge, and the Atlanta Campaign. Lot also includes additional correspondence and ephemera related to the extended Gale family. Entire letter collection spans the years 1847-1909. Andrew Gale (1842-1864) was born in New York to Chloe Bostwick Gale and Peter Gale. He enlisted on August 15, 1862, at Groton, NY, as a Private. On September 2, 1862, he mustered into "K" Co. NY 137th Infantry alongside his uncle Ezra Bostwick (1827-1910) who has 8 letters to family included in this collection. After mustering in, the men moved to Harper's Ferry, VA, for duty at Bolivar Heights. Gale's first letter home is dated October 5, 1862, but the bulk of correspondence dates from June 1863 through June 1864. Interestingly, the diary accompanying the letters seems to indicate that Gale was at home in New York for the first half of 1863, before returning to his regiment on July 27, 1863. It is unclear from the documents in this collection for what reason Gale may have returned home after his initial enlistment in August 1862. Diary pages are pre-printed for 3 days per page so entries are necessarily succinct. This entry of Wednesday, November 25, 1863, is typical of battle content in diary: "pleasant & warm the stars & stripes wave on the lookout (cheers) started off of lookout mountain about eleven o-clock arrived at Missionary ridge just at night quite heavy musketry whiped them soundly took some prisoners & 22 pieces of artillery." Gale's letters provide a more detailed depiction of his war time experience with descriptions such as this written on October 31, 1863 in the aftermath of the Battle of Wauhatchie, TN: "...we have had some hard times since I last wrote you, there has been a hard fight here & our company had four killed & eight wounded....we had marched all day & stopped just at dark & got our suppers & layed down & went to sleep about eleven o'clock we were called up & about twelve o'clock we formed in line of battle & before we got formed in fairly the Rebs fired in to us...." By the summer of 1864 it seems that the war is wearing on Gale. He writes to his parents on June 2, 1864, that he is "in the land of the living" though his regiment has been "marching & fighting ever since we come into Georgia." Gale's last letter in the archive was written on June 20, 1864, just two days before he was killed at Culp's Farm, GA. At some point following Gale's death, an 1864 diary page containing entries from the last week of Gale's life was inserted into the 1863 diary along with a note from the 137th regiment's chaplain. The note was written from the Battlefield Marietta/ Georgia June 24th 1864, and reads in part: "We shall all miss him in the Regiment for he was a true soldier, and had gone out on the skirmish line without the knowledge of his company commander, so anxious was he to end the days of the rebels. A sharp shooter picked him off sending a ball through his head."