behind AotW

Behold a receipt for an English Saddle & Equipments purchased by Sharpsburg veteran Major, soon to be Lieutenant Colonel Henry A Rogers of the 13th North Carolina Infantry in Richmond, VA in July 1863. It was $125.

For reference, due to wartime shortages and inflation, bacon cost $1.25/pound and flour was $28/barrel in Richmond, four times their pre-war prices. And his pay was $130/month for May and June 1863, while still a Captain. It would rise to $150/month as a Major and $170 as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Rogers’ saddle was probably made in the Ordnance Harness Shops at Clarksville, VA, but may instead have literally been English-made and came through the blockade from England.

The W.S. Downer seen on the receipt is Major William S Downer, Superintendent of Armories at the Richmond Arsenal, the organization responsible, among other things, for issuing horse equipment of all kinds. M S K = Military Storekeeper. Downer, by the way, had been a clerk at the US Army’s arsenal at Harpers Ferry, VA in 1860.

Here’s Henry Rogers at about the time of his purchase, in a portrait of unknown provenance from the Chancellorsville Vistor Center.

The receipt above is among Rogers’ Compiled Service Records, now in the National Archives. I got my copy from fold3, a subscription service.