Lot Details
Lot 264
WASHINGTON, GEORGE Autograph letter signed to Major General Nathanael Greene regarding his horse. Headquarters [Middlebrook:...
. Headquarters [Middlebrook:] 31 March 1779. 1 1/2 page autograph letter signed "Go: Washington" on recto and verso of one sheet, with integral blank with address panel in Washington's hand and docketing in another, the sheet watermarked J Whatman. 9 x 7 inches (23.5 x 18.5 cm). Edges browned, losses where roughly opened, a few punctures along folds, offsetting from wax seals, spotting.
After the Battle of Monmouth, Washington encamped his army at Middlebrook, New Jersey for the winter of 1778/79. In the present letter, Washington reports that at the camp Colonel (John) Cox had admired Washington's horse ("my white faced black, on acct. of his strength & abilities") and that he would be willing to exchange him for another, a horse more agreeable to him in color, that he had seen on the property of Mr. (John) Hart, the owner of a large mill near Trenton on whose land the Continental Army had encamped in advance of the Battle of Monmouth. The horse in question is likely Nelson, Washington's favorite of two known horses to have carried him throughout the Revolution. Nelson had been gifted by Brigadier General Thomas Nelson, Jr. in the summer of 1778 and was ridden often by Washington including the day the British surrendered at Yorktown. Nelson, said to be chestnut in color with a white face, long remained with Washington and died at Mount Vernon in 1790. Correspondence dated 1779 between Washington and Greene, a capable Quartermaster-General and important Major General, is rare at auction with APBC reporting only one letter sold in the past 30 years. Not in Fitzpatrick.
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