Identified Wallet from a Rhode Island soldier

This wallet is identified to a soldier in the 12th Rhode Island Infantry. Click photo and "Detailed Description". (SOLD)

This wallet belonged to Private Richard Burlingame of Company K, 12^th Rhode Island Infantry. In the closed position it measures 4” x 6 ½”. When opened it is signed in old period brown ink “Richard Burlingame, Glocester, R.I. 1850”. On the other end of the wallet it is signed “Asa Burlingame Pocket Book / January 1^st 1808”. It appears that Asa was the original owner (no doubt a relative, possibly his father), and handed down to Richard.

 

Richard enlisted in the 12^th New Hampshire on October 6, 1862. By December he found himself with his unit at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The reports after the battle stated that “… the regiment occupied one of the hottest positions on the field, and doggedly held its ground until evening, when, having fired away all its ammunition, and the other regiments retiring, it filed into the rear of the retreating column and returned to the position it occupied in Fredericksburg the night before. Roll call showed 109 killed and wounded, besides 95 missing, many of whom afterwards came in”.

 

The Battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 11–15, 1862, in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. It is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War. The Union Army suffered terrible casualties in futile frontal assaults on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city, bringing an early end to their campaign against the Confederate capital of Richmond.

 

After Fredericksburg, Richard found himself in “Burnside’s Mud March” in the cold and damp weather of January. Apparently these dreadful conditions put him in the hospital on February 7^th, where he remained until being transferred to the Veterans Reserve Corps in May.

 

This leather wallet is over 200 years old, but still remains in nice condition, with no major flaws. I will include what records I have on Burlingame and the 12^th Rhode Island’s battle report from Fredericksburg. This is a nice identified piece.  (SOLD)