When it comes to Civil War postal history, I would describe myself as a dabbler. I don’t specialize in this period, but occasionally I see a cover from the 1860s that intrigues me. It might be the cover’s stamp, postal journey, cancellation, imagery, backstory, or all of the above. I’ve collected about a dozen Union and Confederate covers that way including the first Confederate States general issue postmarked October 21, 1861, which is a relatively early usage, and a Confederate “adversity cover” made from wallpaper.
Most of the covers I have are Union patriotic covers like the one shown in Figure 1.
Two things about this cover caught my eye.
Figure 1 – Patriotic over with “Soldier’s Farewell” design, “prison bars” killer cancel over Scott 65, and October 3, 186?, Columbus, Ohio circular date stamp. This was lot 4030 in Schuyler Rumsey’s sale 116, “The Civil War Sale,” April 26, 2024.
First and most obviously was the image of a soldier saying farewell to his loved one. There are thousands of Union patriotic designs, but for me, the designs showing the human side of the conflict are the most poignant, given that more 600,000 soldiers on both sides of the conflict died in battle or from disease.
The second feature was the fancy “prison bars” killer cancel that was unique to the Columbus, Ohio post office in the early 1860s. Fancy cancels had a limited lifespan – from roughly the mid-1840s to the late 1860s – and were replaced first by duplex handstamps (devices that combined the circular date stamp (CDS) and killer cancellation in a single device) and later by cancellation machines. While they existed, fancy cancels reflected the creativity and individuality of postmasters and postal clerks [1].
This cover did not travel a long way. It was sent to Miss Emeline “Emma” Odaffer in Casstown, Ohio, about 70 miles due west of Columbus. Miss Odaffer was born in 1845 in Ohio and passed away in Illinois at age 77 in 1923.
The cover no longer has its enclosure so it’s a mystery who sent it. However, a reasonable guess is that Emma’s fiancé, William R. Beamer (1841-1908), was the correspondent. William served in Company K, 1st Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry from 1861 to 1864. There was a large military facility named Camp Chase in Columbus that served as a training facility, prison for Confederate captives, a place of detention for Union soldiers paroled from Confederate prisons, and a site for Northern regiments to receive their mustering-out pay. I have not found a record of William’s regiment stationed at Camp Chase, but it is certainly possible and may explain why this cover was postmarked in Columbus.
As I was researching this cover, it occurred to me that I had another cover postmarked In Columbus with a prison bars fancy cancel (Figure 2). Other than the fancy cancel, it’s an unremarkable cover – no cachet and like the cover in Figure 1, it is franked with a run-of-the-mill 3-cent stamp from the Series of 1861, one of some 1.8 billion issued to meet the Union demand during the Civil War.
What drew me to this cover was that it had its original enclosure and was clearly addressed to “Miss Mattie Bohm” of Cleveland, Ohio.
Figure 2 - Cover postmarked in Columbus, Ohio, December 16, 1862 (based on enclosed letter) with "prison bars" fancy cancellation on Scott 65.
When this item arrived at my house, I anxiously unfolded the letter only to realize it was written in something other than English (Figure 3). Consequently, I set it to the side for another day.
Figure 3 – Top portion of page one of the Bohm letter.
But after researching the Odaffer cover, I began to wonder if the Bohm cover and letter were also related to the Civil War. I pulled out the letter again, and the handwriting looked to me like Slavic, maybe Polish or Czech. We live across the street from someone who grew up in Poland, so my wife showed it to her. The neighbor thought it looked like German. When she said that, I had one of those “aha” moments.
First, it made perfect sense that it would be written in German, since Ohio had a large German-born population in the 1860s. Second, I knew just the person to translate this letter: Abby Huber, an expert in translating historic German documents [2]. She had previously translated a stampless letter from 1845 for me [3].
Collaborating with a colleague, Abby provided me this translation:
Miss Mattie Bohm
Care [of]: Miss E. Bohm
No 74. Oregon St.
Cleveland, Oh.
Columbus, Dec. 14, 1862
My dear sister,
Today has been a nice day for you, one of joy and best wishes, and I must make my contribution, too. My dearest Mathilde, I send you my best, most sincere wishes for your continued wellbeing at the start of this new year for you. May the good heavens always grant you uninterrupted health, an ever-cheery disposition, and the fulfillment of all your best wishes. If it had been possible, I would have so gladly wished you a happy birthday in person, but, as it was not possible for me to do so, please accept them on this paper, and believe me: They come from the heart of your brother who loves you truly. As soon as I can go to Cleveland, which I hope will happen around Christmas, I will tell you this myself.
It has been a long time since I received any letter from you, and I ask that you not forget me. Write and tell me whether or not Father has received the letter from the 10th of this month and followed the advice given therein, and how you all are. For me, things are always tolerable, meaning that my health is good, but I lack the peace of mind necessary to make me happy. I dare not share my doubts and fears with my little wife, out of fear that it would put her in a melancholy mood. But I can share them with you. I fear, not for my sake but for her sake, that in the next main rotation, my name will come up. Something tells me [this will happen]. For me, this would simply represent the long-hoped for fulfillment of what was once a burning desire, as I am a soldier through and through and cannot enjoy this lazy garrison life so long as there are still laudable honors to be won on the battlefield and enemies to defeat. But you know the sort of baseless fears that afflict my little Eva, as though I were absolutely certain to be one of the first casualties as soon as I returned to the field. Be that as it may, but I live in constant fear that she, if the rotation that she so dreads were to occur, that she would so fret and worry, that I would have serious concerns about her life or her health. That is what worries me so greatly. Whether I should have waited to make her my wife later has nothing to do with it, in my opinion, because she loved me just as much beforehand as she does now and her health suffered very much due to her worries and dread during my imprisonment.
But now I will be quiet. I wished you a happy start to this 21st year of your life, and I fear I may have ruined your fun by telling you my cares. Give my warm regards to parents and brothers. I will hopefully be able to wish you all a happy and joyful New Year in Persona propria [sic]. Until then, I bid adieu to my dear Mathilde and am, as always,
Your faithful, loving brother,
Eduard
What a beautifully crafted 21st birthday greeting from Eduard to his sister, Mattie. But who was Eduard and what of his wife, "little Eva"?
"Eduard" was Edward H. Bohm. He was born in Germany in 1837. In 1851, he and his family emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York before moving to a farm near Cleveland, Ohio. His sister, Mathilde - Mattie for short - was just 10 years old when they made the trip across the Atlantic.
Edward was working for the Cleveland & Toledo Railroad Company when the Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861. Within a week, Edward enlisted for a three-month stint and was assigned to Company K, 7th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In early May, the 7th Regiment, which was training in Columbus, was reorganized into a three-year unit, and Edward reenlisted and was made a sergeant. The 7th Regiment then marched off to western Virginia.
It wasn't long before Edward saw his first action.[4] While on a reconnaissance mission on August 20, 1861, Edward's company was attacked by Confederate forces, and Edward was captured along with several of his comrades. He could have escaped but opted to stay with his captain who was mortally wounded in the attack.
Edward was transferred at least three times as a prisoner-of-war (POW). He was held, "very pleasantly" he noted, for the first three weeks at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. He then spent a month at the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond before being transferred to Parish Prison in New Orleans where he stayed until February 1862. He was then moved to a prison in North Carolina. After more than nine months of captivity, he was paroled on May 24, 1862, and returned to Camp Chase near Columbus on June 7, 1862.
His duty at Camp Chase was to organize provost-guards. These were units that functioned as a combination rear guard and prison keeper. Clearly, this was not exciting duty, and he was itching to get back into action. It was during this lull that he not only penned his letter to Mattie (on December 14, 1862) but married Eva Miller. Eva and he tied the knot on July 13, 1862, a little more than a month after he returned as a POW.
I assume Eva and he knew one another before he enlisted so his captivity must have been very hard on her - harder on her, it seems, than on Edward based on the tone of his letter.
Despite his misgivings of how his return to the field might affect Eva, Edward was commissioned a second lieutenant in January 1863 (Figure 4), and in March 1863, he returned to action in the eastern theater. Edward fought in horrific battles in 1863 at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge. He was wounded in the upper left arm at the Battle of Ringgold Gap in Georgia in late November 1863. He was promoted to first lieutenant in January 1864 (backdated to November 1863) and took part in a few more engagements before his unit's three-year term ended in July 1864. Edward returned to civilian life at that point.
Figure 4 - Edward Bohm as a Lieutenant During the Civil War
In the midst of all this action, Edward must have been crestfallen when he learned, probably from a letter he received in the field, that his "little Eva" died at age 20 in October 1863. She died in Cleveland and was buried in Woodland Cemetery in that city.
Eva's cause of death was listed as "confinement." Confinement does not have a medical definition, but it was typically identified as the cause of death of women who died during or shortly after childbirth. Given that Edward and Eva married about 16 months before her death and he returned to action about seven months before her passing, it is very possible she was pregnant and died from complications of pregnancy.
What Edward did after he mustered out in July 1864 is unknown, but in January 1865 he married again, this time to Alvina Jassaud with whom he had three children. Tragically, Alvina died in 1875 at age 32 from "puerperal fever," a 19th century term for a postpartum infection meaning that like Eva, Alvina also died during or shortly after giving birth. In 1877, Edward married for a third time to Hedwig Schmale, with whom he also had three children. Hedwig made it through her childbearing years and passed away at age 84 in 1939.
In between losing his first wife Eva and his second wife Alvina, Edward also lost his dear sister Mattie. Mattie married Herman Stuhr in September 1867, and less than a year later, in July 1868, she passed away at age 27. No cause of death has been found, but it would not come as a shock if she also died in childbirth. While infectious diseases were the leading causes of death in mid-19th century America, deaths due to childbirth-related complications were also common.
While visited with the death of loved ones often in the 10 years after the Civil War ended, Edward forged ahead. Always interested in politics, Edward was elected a school board member in Cleveland in 1870 and served in that capacity until 1873. He also was nominated and elected recorder of Cuyahoga County in 1870, a position he would hold until 1876. An ardent Republican, he served as a presidential elector for Ohio in 1876, but he then became disillusioned with the Republican Party and became an equally ardent Democrat. He formed a short-lived German-language newspaper in Cleveland, served as a member of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument Commission, and served 18 years as a justice of the peace, despite not becoming a naturalized citizen until 1905.
Edward died of a heart attack at age 69 in 1906. In the May 8, 1906, Plain Dealer, he was described as "one of the most widely known residents of Cleveland. ... For fifty-six years he lived a life of remarkable activity in this city." The photo of Edward in Figure 5 is obviously from later in his life and was the picture printed with the Plain Dealer obituary.
Figure 5 – Edward H. Bohm, Year Unknown.
Stamp collecting fascinates me, but I especially enjoy the combination of postal and social histories offered by cover collecting. A collector of fancy cancels would certainly appreciate the Odaffer and Bohm covers, and a connoisseur of patriotic covers would find much to admire in the Odaffer envelope. But having the letter that Edward penned to his dear sister Mattie on a chilly winter day at Camp Chase and that he carefully folded and put in a stamped envelope brings these pieces of paper to life.
For me, stamp collecting is not just about collecting small pieces of paper stuck to envelopes and tracking how those envelopes moved through the postal system. It’s also learning about the lives of the people who stuck those small pieces of paper on their correspondence.
[1] United States Cancellations 1845-1869: Unusual and Representative Markings, Hubert C. Skinner and Amos Eno, American Philatelic Society, 1980.
[2] Visit https://www.ajordanhuber.com/.
[3] “Dr. Gabriel L. Miesse’s Stampless Letter in German to Distant Relatives, 1845,” https://www.mypostalhistory.com/post/a-stampless-letter-to-germany-1845).
[4] For a comprehensive look at the 7th Regiment, see Itinerary of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry 1861-1864 With Roster, Portraits and Biographies, edited and compiled by Lawrence Wilson, The Neale Publishing Company, 1907. Edward Bohm was a significant contributor to this work, and his death in 1906 before the book was completed came as a shock. Wilson, who had recently been named regimental historian wrote, "The first great shock and irreparable loss was experienced in the sudden and unexpected death of Capital Bohm, who had with his usual force and zeal taken hold of this project with a zest and will presaging certain success. His strength of character, physical and mental force, zeal and enthusiasm were sadly missed by his associates and his untimely death deeply mourned."
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