1 pg.+ stampless, free-franked address leaf. To Colonel J R Fenwick, Adjutant General, Fort Gansevoort, New York City. This letter asks that William Etherington, an enlisted soldier in the Infantry Regiment of Lt. Quackenbush at Fort Gansevoort, be detained. He allegedly was a fugitive slave belonging to Alexander Scott who was then in Washington. “I do not know what arrangements have been made in the case and this is only to prevent his being marched off till you can be further advised from the Adjt. and Insp. Genl.” Parker adds a cryptic comment, apparently about the War with the British, then in its second year: “All is further down the river, more smoke than fire.” (A few weeks before, an American force crossed the Niagara River, seized Fort Erie and defeated a British force a mile away) Later in the War, Parker, a Massachusetts attorney, himself became Adjutant General and Inspector General of the US Army, and, post-war, Paymaster General of the Army as well. Etherington’s fate is unknown. We could locate no African-American of that name in early US census records.
1 pg.+ stampless, free-franked address leaf. To Colonel J R Fenwick, Adjutant General, Fort Gansevoort, New York City. This letter asks that William Etherington, an enlisted soldier in the Infantry Regiment of Lt. Quackenbush at Fort Gansevoort, be detained. He allegedly was a fugitive slave belonging to Alexander Scott who was then in Washington. “I do not know what arrangements have been made in the case and this is only to prevent his being marched off till you can be further advised from the Adjt. and Insp. Genl.” Parker adds a cryptic comment, apparently about the War with the British, then in its second year: “All is further down the river, more smoke than fire.” (A few weeks before, an American force crossed the Niagara River, seized Fort Erie and defeated a British force a mile away) Later in the War, Parker, a Massachusetts attorney, himself became Adjutant General and Inspector General of the US Army, and, post-war, Paymaster General of the Army as well. Etherington’s fate is unknown. We could locate no African-American of that name in early US census records.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
