Raynors 2020-05 Putnal
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/30/2020
Good war-date letter, 2 1/2pp. 4to., written by Sallie A. Miller, wife of Lt. Col. Horace H. Miller, 20th Mississippi, and aunt of Virginia Frazer Boyles, "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy." Written to her niece, Letitia Austin Frazer, "Blalock House, June 31st, 1862," reading, in part: "I received your second letter…I did not reply to the first because it came from Corinth…by the time it reached me Corinth had been evacuated (a hateful and ruinous word) and I did not know where to direct it…it seems like so many years since…you left Vicksburg, a bride, and eve place is so changed…we have a very pleasant place…four miles from the Rail Road and a delightful house with 12 large rooms…the greatest trouble I have…is being absent from Mr. Miller…he is now at Vicksburg, an aide to Gen. Smith and will retain that position with the 20th Miss. Regt. is either exchanged [surrendered Feb. 16, 1862, battle of Fort Donelson, Tenn.] of filled up when he will join it as Lt. Col.. He deserves a brigd. Generalship…if I had the power he should have that position. Capt. [Charles Wesley] Frazer [Co. I, 21st Tenn. Vols., WIA Belmont & Murfreesboro, Tenn.,] should be Col. where he could be promoted and be crowned with laurels for his conduct at Belmont…a soldier who is aid to Gen. [John B.] Villepigue [gave] a very flourishing account of Capt. Frazer…as a very gallant officer etc. You need not allow him to see this, it is intended for your ear and not his. I don't like to see a man vain…tell him not to allow you to go with him…you would be much better with Virginia…Laura writes me that it is very uncomfortable at Jackson…it would be so much pleasanter for her at Canton…direct your letters to Mrs. H. H. Miller, care Y. A. Marshall…where is your Pa…what [does] think about the Yankees…Sallie A. Miller." Her husband, Horace H. Miller began the war as field officer in the 20th Mississippi Infantry, commanded CSA forces at the battle of Ponchatoula, La., March 24-26, 1863, all until finishing his war career as colonel of the 9th Mississippi Cavalry. Charles W. Frazer was born on July 21, 1834, in Fayette County, Tennessee. He attended the University of Mississippi. At the start of the Civil War he was commissioned captain in the 21st Tennessee Infantry. He fought in the Battle of Belmont in Mississippi County, Missouri on November 7, 1861, Perryville, Kentucky on October 8, 1862, until he was captured in September, 1863. Sent to Johnson's Island, Ohio prison camp he remained there until his release on June 11, 1865. He died on July 11, 1897. His daughter, Virginia Frazer Boyle, "Poet Laureate of the Confederacy," was born in Chattanooga on February 14, 1863, to he and Letitia Austin Frazer. After the Civil War, the family moved to Memphis, where her father practiced law. Ahead of her time, she read law in her father's office and helped researched cases for him. On a visit to the Gulf Coast in 1873, the ten-year-old Boyle read a poem to Jefferson Davis. According to the story, he crowned her with a wreath of jessamine and proclaimed her to be "poet laureate of the Confederacy." The teenager's literary career began when she was fourteen when Harper's Weekly accepted a poem she had written. Family members insisted she return the twenty-five-dollar check, contending that no respectable woman would accept money for work. They compromised by giving the money to charity. In 1894, she married attorney Thomas Raymond Boyle. Her first published prose was the southern-dialect "Hoodoo Tales." Other works soon followed. Each year she wrote an ode to the Confederate dead, and in 1910 the United Confederate Veterans made the title given to her by Jefferson Davis official. She died on December 13, 1938, while working on a novel about Hernando De Soto. Minor toning, else VG.
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