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Item# 20612
New 3-1-23
Price: $650
CSA 4-2a, 5¢ dark blue (4 margins) tied bold neat NEW ORLEANS LA 24 APR (1862) circular datestamp on cover to Doct. Thos. A. Watkins, Winona, Miss. Used just as federal troops were approaching the city from the south. On April 29, the city was captured by Farragut and Butler. One of the latest known covers posted from New Orleans. Ex Ralph Swap. $650.
Thomas Alexander Watkins(1802-1884) was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of George and Mary Early Watkins. Thomas A. Watkins attended schools at Mt. Zion and the University of Georgia. He received his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1825, he moved to north Alabama, settling in Courtland. There he owned a drugstore, and from 1832, practiced medicine in partnership with Dr. Jack Shackleford. Watkins married Sarah Epes Fitzgerald in 1834. Their first daughter, Letitia Ann Watkins, was born on March 21, 1835. After a brief venture to Columbus, Mississippi, where he entered into the cotton-gin business with David Hubbard of Aberdeen in 1841, Watkins moved from Alabama to Carroll County, Mississippi, in 1843. There he acquired a plantation of some 1,500 acres, Forest Place, and apparently gave up his medical practice for the life of a cotton planter. Thomas Watkins remained in Mississippi through the Civil War, joining the Home Guards of Middleton, hiring out slaves to the Confederate Army and the South and North Alabama Railroad, and acting as a local Confederate agent for slave-impressment claims in 1864. After the death of his wife, Sarah, in 1865, Thomas Watkins sold his property in late 1866 and removed to Austin, Texas, near the family of his eldest daughter, Letitia. Watkins remained in Texas until his death in Austin.