107-year-old document shows up at Fort Meade
Posted: Thursday, July 31, 2008
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Talk about snail mail. A 107-year-old document in its original mailing tube has shown up in the mail at the post office in Fort Meade, an old Army outpost just east of Sturgis.
"I could tell it was something very old by the appearance and because it was addressed to the 13th Cavalry at Fort Meade, South Dakota," Kathleen Wacker, postmaster at Fort Meade, told The Associated Press.
The faded brown tube did not bear a zip code and was slightly peeling apart, she said.
"To have gotten it in the mail more than 100 years later is extraordinary," said Charles Rambow, director of Old Fort Meade Museum and Historical Research Association. "It's an absolutely beautiful document."
The parchment, dated March 12, 1901, is signed by President William McKinley and Secretary of War Elihu Root and officially appoints Lt. Charles W. Fenton captain of the 13th Cavalry, said Rambow.
"The museum is delighted to have this," said SusanMary Rambow, Charles Rambow's wife and a museum volunteer. "I'm hoping to find the descendants of Captain Fenton," she said.
Neither Wacker nor Rambow know how the tube got to the post office. It arrived this past spring.
"My only guess would be that it was sitting behind the desk of someone in Washington," said Rambow.
The 13th Cavalry was the only unit to originate at Fort Meade, and McKinley was assassinated not long after signing the document, said Rambow.
The document will be displayed in the museum by this weekend. The museum is housed in the old fort headquarters and specializes in Fort Meade's military history.
Fort Meade was established during the winter of 1878-79 by units of the 1st and 11th infantry and the reorganized 7th Cavalry. Its mission was to provide military protection for gold seekers and settlers who arrived before and after the Black Hills Treaty of 1877.
It was named Fort Meade in honor of Gen. George Meade of Civil War fame.
The 7th Cavalry, reformed after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, constituted the first permanent garrison of the post.
Fort Meade survived as a military installation until 1944, when in became a Veterans Administration Hospital as it remains today.
On the Net: http://www.fortmeademuseum.org/history.htm
"I could tell it was something very old by the appearance and because it was addressed to the 13th Cavalry at Fort Meade, South Dakota," Kathleen Wacker, postmaster at Fort Meade, told The Associated Press.
The faded brown tube did not bear a zip code and was slightly peeling apart, she said.
"To have gotten it in the mail more than 100 years later is extraordinary," said Charles Rambow, director of Old Fort Meade Museum and Historical Research Association. "It's an absolutely beautiful document."
The parchment, dated March 12, 1901, is signed by President William McKinley and Secretary of War Elihu Root and officially appoints Lt. Charles W. Fenton captain of the 13th Cavalry, said Rambow.
"The museum is delighted to have this," said SusanMary Rambow, Charles Rambow's wife and a museum volunteer. "I'm hoping to find the descendants of Captain Fenton," she said.
Neither Wacker nor Rambow know how the tube got to the post office. It arrived this past spring.
"My only guess would be that it was sitting behind the desk of someone in Washington," said Rambow.
The 13th Cavalry was the only unit to originate at Fort Meade, and McKinley was assassinated not long after signing the document, said Rambow.
The document will be displayed in the museum by this weekend. The museum is housed in the old fort headquarters and specializes in Fort Meade's military history.
Fort Meade was established during the winter of 1878-79 by units of the 1st and 11th infantry and the reorganized 7th Cavalry. Its mission was to provide military protection for gold seekers and settlers who arrived before and after the Black Hills Treaty of 1877.
It was named Fort Meade in honor of Gen. George Meade of Civil War fame.
The 7th Cavalry, reformed after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, constituted the first permanent garrison of the post.
Fort Meade survived as a military installation until 1944, when in became a Veterans Administration Hospital as it remains today.
On the Net: http://www.fortmeademuseum.org/history.htm
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