117

"I was in the house where Elsworth was shot."

William J. Dinsmore.

Letters describing the inn where Colonel Ellsworth was shot, with a flagstaff fragment.

Georgetown, DC, 30 June and 4 July 1861
Pair of Autograph Letters Signed to wife Lizzie. 3 and 4 pages, each about 7½ x 49 inches on a folding sheet; mailing folds, minor foxing. With two original envelopes bearing free franks of C.H. Van Wyck, and a wood fragment about 1¾ inches long and less than ¼ inches across.

On 24 May 1861, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth removed a Confederate flag from the roof of an inn in Alexandria, Virginia, and was shot by the innkeeper. He was the first Union officer killed in the war,  and the first great martyr of the Union cause. Fragments of the flagstaff and the stairs where he was killed were widely distributed as relics. Dinsmore wrote these letters a few weeks later while stationed in nearby Georgetown with the 1st Massachusetts Infantry.

"Take good care of this little peice of wood I send in this letter, as it is a peice of the flagstaff from which the late Colonel Elsworth took the secession flag when he was shot. I also had a peice of the stairs where he stood when he was shot but I have lost it somewhere. The stairs of the hotel where he was shot is all cut to pieces and carried away as relics, as is also the flagstaff. There is some folks that would give 2 dollars for that peice that I send in this letter, of such value is every thing connected with Ellsworth death considered." Enclosed is the splinter of wood.



Four days later, Dinsmore tells about how he obtained the specimen, while visiting a friend from another regiment stationed in Alexandria: "I was in the house where Elsworth was shot. It was an awful looking house with a guard of soldiers round it, and a sentry at the door to keep folks out. I got a pass from the provost marshall, so I had liberty to go all over. It is all tore to peices inside. The stairs where Elsworth was shot is all cut away, so is the floor, and every thing around the stairway that could be taken as relics." 

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