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Item# 17224
Price: $500
Incoming blockade-run use from Paris to Charleston via Bermuda and Wilmington N.C. Small cover with three original letters datelined at Paris, France, in February-March 1864, addressed to Captain Burckmyer at Charleston, nos. 34-36 with the usual cross-written content on thin paper (some reinforced file splits), excellent articulate content with details about Confederate soldiers they know, wedding at Confederate Embassy in Paris, etc. Carried privately from France so no postal markings, transited Bermuda and then to Wilmington, N.C., and Charleston, S.C.; Burckmyer correspondence is well known. Ex Walske. $500.
The Burckmyer blockade correspondence was first offered as an original find through Kaufmann Auctions in 1981 and heavily written up in the Confederate Philatelist. The incredibly detailed letters are between two exceptionally well-educated and expressive people who often write about the nature of corresponding by flag of truce in perfectly readable hand, thus a boon to postal historians. In early 1863, Cornelius L. Burckmyer, his wife--Charlotte Rebecca Burckmyer--their daughter Mamie, and Mamie’s nurse, Ann Maguire, were in France. Burckmyer decided to return to the Confederacy to do whatever he could to support the cause. He left his family in France to return to their home in Charleston. Burckmyer owned stock in blockade runners and seemed to know which port was the most likely to be successful in getting mail through. Many of his letters told of his trials with blockade runners. Without the content of these letters, we would not know today where these letters passed through the blockade. In 1929, a book was published by the family which includes all the text of the letters. The letters shed much light on the blockade runners.