#125-CIVIL WAR SALE: PAYMENT FOR CONNECTICUT MILITIA

The payment is for the soldier's 8th $10 payment due him for enlisting in the state's militia. Interestingly, the request for payment was issued in South Carolina, which I assume that is where Stanley Wordsworth was with his Uniojn Army regiment at the time.

One would assume that this form for payment was one used regularly and for scores of soldiers, but since it was a request that was already paid, such documents were not likely to have been saved after the war. The document was filled in by the soldier and turned in for payment. It was not in the soldier's possession after it was paid.
Documents that were among a soldier's possessions after the war were typically the few that had a chance of survival.

As was the case, for example, with one document in this sale, the soldier clearly had folded up a pass given to him and intentionally or accidentally retained it tucked away in a pocket or wallet. It was likely found and kept by his family after the war and thus survived for the next 160+ years. It is quite interesting what documents exist today in private hands, likely where they have been stored for 150 years! Rarely does such a document come with anything more for information than "with the effects of private____ kept by the family since the war."

This piece, stamped as paid, could have been given to the soldier once the payment due had been made; but it is more likely that it was filed away in a government file and somehow survived. I do not have information on the trail this document took from being filed in a field office or tent--and then surviving when all such documents were deemed unnecessary and destroyed.