Bath Paper Mills Company — Confederate Citizens File
A worked transcription made for CivilWarArtillery.com to the same three-layer rule as the other files in this collection: diplomatic transcription (exactly what the page says), normalized data (searchable form, kept separate), and proposed identifications (external knowledge, flagged, never merged).
Source
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository | National Archives (NARA), Record Group 109 |
| Collection | Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens or Business Firms, compiled 1874–1899, documenting the period 1861–1865 |
| Microfilm publication | M346 |
| NARA catalog ID | 2133274 |
| State (Fold3 index) | South Carolina |
| SHA-256 | 94cf160bc659b6e43a8fca2bc5c37aeb13a377615f12ed3b1066b84b94a1dae3 |
| Page count | 42 (images 1–40 archival; image 41 = Fold3 source sheet, image 42 blank — both omitted) |
Two corrections to the file's own labelling, before anything else.
The firm is Bath Paper Mills Company, not "Batch." The drive folder carries the misspelling; the documents never do. Every sheet that names the company writes Bath — including the engraved letterhead of its Augusta agency.
And the folder's "Paper Time Fuses" overstates the record. Across all forty images there is exactly one mention of fuze paper, and it is an offer, not a delivery: on 2 October 1862 the company's agent says he "will at the future time make Fuze paper & asks for a Sample." Nothing here shows the mill ever supplying it. What this mill demonstrably sold the Confederacy is cartridge paper, and one clerk states the purpose in his own words in the remarks column — "For making Cartridges."
Machine OCR is worthless here and was not used. Every page is in cursive. Every page below was read by eye from the scan.
What this file is
A paper mill's war, told through its bills. Cartridge paper is not ordnance in the way a Columbiad is, but no gun fires without it: it is the stock from which cartridge bags were made, and the Ordnance Bureau bought it by the ton. These forty sheets follow one mill from small parcels in 1861 to a contract with the head of the Confederate laboratories at the end of 1862.
The accounts are headed, in the Bureau's own formula, "Ordnance Service in all its branches."
The price of paper, 1861 to 1862
The same commodity, from the same mill, across eighteen months:
| Date | Quantity | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 20 June 1861 | 20 bundles, 831 lb | 12½¢ a pound |
| 14 December 1861 | 165 lb | 15¢ |
| 25 March 1862 | 8 bundles and a roll of Manila Rope paper, 742 lb | 20¢ |
| 4 June 1862 | 10,776 lb | 30¢ |
| 1 October 1862 | 54 bundles, 13 × 16½ in., 3,050 lb | 30¢ |
From 12½¢ to 30¢ in sixteen months — and the December 1862 contract would put the finest grades at fifty. That is the Confederate paper market in one column of figures.
Image 1 — File-jacket cover, Bath Paper Mills Company; officers named; a second, inverted name at the foot; no date, no figures
A tall, narrow buff card photographed against a black masking frame, the leaf occupying roughly the middle third of the film frame. The card is heavier stock than the accounts that follow — the standard M346 file jacket. The corners are rounded and slightly bumped, the top edge a little ragged. Writing is in black iron-gall ink in a fine, confident hand with long flourished capitals; the whole card is otherwise blank, its centre carrying only two faint pencil tick-marks (a small bracket-and-numeral device, apparently an archivist's or filmer's mark) and a pair of white scratches in the film emulsion running diagonally across the lower half. At the foot, written the other way up so that it reads only when the card is turned, is a second, quite separate personal name in a much larger and more flourished hand. No stamps, no docket numbers, no dates, no dollar figures anywhere on the sheet. A Fold3 watermark and image URL are printed above the frame by the digital provider and form no part of the record.
Bath Paper Mills Company
Geo W. Winter, President
Wm. K. Huse[?], Agent
[remainder of the card blank]
[inverted at the foot of the card, reading when the card is turned:]
Bates, Ezra
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) The firm is written Bath, not "Batch" — clearly so, with a plain "th": this cover is the authority against the drive-folder title. (2) The agent's surname is compressed and blotted: it reads as four or five letters beginning with a crossbarred capital and ending "-se" or "-ee"; Huse[?] is the best I can make of it, but Hurse, Hussee and Ause are not excluded. Do not print the surname without a second reading from another sheet in the file. (3) The middle initial of the agent is a single letter with a following point; it reads K but could be R. (4) "Geo W. Winter, President" is clear. (5) "Bates, Ezra" at the foot, written upside down, is a stray: it is a personal name in the alphabetical form used to head M346 jackets, in a different and larger hand, and has nothing to do with a paper mill. Either the jacket was re-used, or a second jacket cover was filmed lying under this one. It belongs to a separate citizen's file and should not be indexed to Bath Paper Mills. (6) No place, date or amount on the cover, so this card cannot be tied by figure or date to any particular account in the file.
Image 2 — Docket (verso of a folded account), Bath Paper Mills Company, June 29, 186[4?], $103.87; War Department Record Division oval handstamp
The blank outer face of a large account sheet folded in the usual way for filing, photographed flat. The paper is a pale blue-grey laid stock, heavily creased: a strong horizontal fold runs across the upper quarter and a strong vertical fold down the middle, with the panel between them serving as the docket panel. Because the sheet is thin and the film exposure heavy, the whole of the printed billhead on the other side shows through in mirror image — the printed heading, the ruled money columns, the REMARKS box at what is here the upper left, and the clerk's receipt and signatures at the lower left all read backwards through the paper. Docket writing is in black ink in a small, sloping business hand, with the "No" and the money line each ruled off with a long underscore. A large bold pencil check-mark ("✓") stands alone in the centre of the panel. Across the lower centre is a faint oval handstamp, reading the right way round on this face, lettered RECORD DIVISION around the top of the oval and WAR DEPARTMENT around the bottom, with a star at the left and a smaller inner oval device; it is worn and only partly legible. A white emulsion scratch runs diagonally across the lower half of the frame. No file or voucher endorsement other than the "No 14".
No 14
----------------
Bath Paper Mills Company
June 29th 186[4?]
$103.87
----------
✓ [bold pencil check-mark]
[faint oval handstamp, lower centre:]
RECORD DIVISION
WAR DEPARTMENT
[inner device and star illegible]
Checks: Only one figure on the docket, $103.87, and nothing on this face to prove it against. Not proved here; it must be tested against the account it belongs to.
Flagged: (1) The year is not certain. The month and day, "June 29th", are plain; the year reads "186" followed by a single slanted stroke that is either a very cursive 4 or a 1. Given the Confederate States billhead showing through, 1861 is on its face implausible for this file, but that is an inference and not a reading — recorded as 186[4?] and to be settled against the account itself. (2) "No 14" is written by the filing clerk on the docket panel, not printed at a sheet head, so unlike a printed form number it does appear to be this voucher's own number in its series — but it is a docket number and I have not yet seen it repeated on the account. (3) The firm is written Bath. (4) No place is named on the docket at all — neither Bath, Augusta nor Charleston. (5) The mirrored show-through is legible only in part and I have not attempted to read it here; it belongs to the front of this same sheet and should be transcribed from that face. (6) Whether the account facing this docket in the film is in fact this docket's own account is not established from this frame; the $103.87 and the June 29 date are the tests to apply to the neighbouring image.
Image 3 — Account, The Confederate States to Bath Paper Mills Company, 20 bundles cartridge paper, 831 lb at 12½¢; receipted Augusta, Ga., June 29, 1861; $103.87
The recto of the sheet whose blank outer face is Image 2. A large printed billhead on pale bluish laid paper, ruled with about twenty-five faint horizontal money lines and four vertical column rules (a date column at the left, then the particulars, then dollars and cents, then a wide REMARKS column at the right). The printed matter is in a mixture of ornamented blackletter and roman: the heading "The Confederate States To ______ Dr." across the top over a heavy double rule; "REMARKS. / Showing the object of the purchase or expenditure," at the head of the right-hand column; "Dollars......." on the footing line; and, at the foot, the printed receipt formula with "(SIGNED DUPLICATES.)" and a printed "186_" for the year. Only two of the ruled lines carry entries; the rest of the sheet is empty. The same heavy horizontal and vertical folds seen from the back cross the sheet, the vertical one running through the signature at the foot. Ink is black, in a fine sloping clerical hand. A pencilled check-mark stands against the item and another against the footing. A dark ink smudge or offset blot sits above the heading at the top edge. The REMARKS column is entirely blank. No file number and no printed form number anywhere on the sheet.
The Confederate States To Bath - Paper Mills Company Dr.
============================================================================
| REMARKS.
1861 | Showing the object of the purchase or expenditure,
|
June 20 For 20 Bundles Cartridge Paper |
831 lbs @ 12½ 103|87 ✓ |
|
[remaining lines blank] |
|
Dollars....... 103|87 ✓
Received from F C Humphreys M S K Ordnance
One Hundred & Three ______ dollars Eighty Seven cents: in full of the above account.
Augusta Geo Geo W. Winter
June 29th 186 1 } (SIGNED DUPLICATES.) Prest.
Bath Paper Mills Co
Checks: 831 lb × 12½¢ = 10,387.5¢ = $103.875. The clerk entered 103.87, dropping the half cent — a difference of half a cent in the government's favour, not an error to be corrected. The single extension, 103.87, carries down to the footing "Dollars 103.87" exactly; the written receipt, "One Hundred & Three dollars Eighty Seven cents," agrees with the footing exactly. Proves at $103.87 (with the half-cent drop noted).
Flagged: (1) The date column is headed 1861, and the printed "186_" at the foot is completed with a 1, both plainly written. This settles the doubtful year on the docket in Image 2: that docket reads June 29th 1861, not 1864. (2) Image 2 is the verso of this sheet. The docket's figure ($103.87), date (June 29) and firm all agree, and the mirrored show-through seen in Image 2 — REMARKS box, ruled money columns, receipt line and signature block — is this face read backwards. They are one document, and the docket's "No 14" is this account's number. (3) The place of receipt is Augusta, Geo[rgia] — the mill is at Bath, S.C., but the money was received at Augusta. No mention of Bath on this sheet other than in the firm's name. (4) "F C Humphreys, M S K Ordnance" is written with no stops after the initials; M S K is the ordinary abbreviation for Military Store Keeper. The surname is clear. (5) The firm is written Bath on both the heading and the signature line, with what looks like a short dash after it in the heading. (6) The president's surname is written with a long flourish and reads Winter here and on the file jacket; no other spelling is suggested by either. (7) The paper is billed here at 12½ cents a pound — a rate to hold against the 30 cents a pound charged later in the file.
Image 4 — File-jacket cover, Bath Paper Mills Co., Bath, S.C.; War Department reference A.G.O.-282-H; agent named; Confederate Archives handstamp, April 1893
A second, tall, narrow jacket cover, again photographed against a black mask. The stock is grey-buff and slightly speckled, with a single soft horizontal crease across the lower third. The writing is in a broad-nibbed black ink, much heavier and rounder than the fine hand on Image 1 — this is a clerk labelling the file, not a mill officer. The lettering fills only the upper third; the middle of the card is blank apart from two faint pencil bracket-and-numeral tick-marks like those on Image 1. At the foot, struck in purple-black across the card, is a large oval handstamp of the Adjutant General's Office, Confederate Archives Division, with a rubber dater set into the middle of it; the ring lettering is worn at the right where the stamp lifted, and the tens digit of the day is almost entirely unprinted. No dollar figures, no dates in the 1860s, no signatures.
Bath Paper Mills Co
Bath
S. C.
A.G.O. - 282 - H - /12.
Wm. K. Huse - Agent.
[card otherwise blank]
[oval handstamp at the foot:]
ADJUTANT GENERAL'S O[FFICE]
APR [?]6 1893
[DI]VISION
CONFEDERATE ARCHIV[ES]
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove. (The "282" and "12" in the reference line are a filing citation, not money.)
Flagged: (1) This card settles the agent's name. Written here in a large, plain hand with no ambiguity: Wm. K. Huse, Agent — H-u-s-e, and the middle initial is unmistakably K. The doubtful reading on Image 1 should be corrected to Huse on the authority of this sheet. (2) The place is given in full and unmistakably: Bath, S. C. The firm is Bath, never Batch. (3) The reference line reads letter for letter as transcribed. I take "A.G.O." to be the Adjutant General's Office, and the whole to be a War Department file citation of the 1890s rather than anything written during the war — but that is a proposal, not a reading. The final element is written with a solidus, "-/12.", and I cannot say whether the clerk meant "1/2", "no. 12" or a bundle mark. (4) The day in the handstamp is not legible: the units digit is a clear 6, the tens digit struck so faintly that only two specks of ink survive. It is April 1893 and no more can be honestly said; do not print "April 26" or "April 16" from this scan. (5) The words "OFFICE", "DIVISION" and "ARCHIVES" in the stamp ring are each partly off the paper or unlinked and are supplied in brackets from the surviving letters. (6) No account, no date of supply and no amount, so nothing here can be matched by figure to any particular voucher in the file; this is a jacket, not a document of the 1860s.
Image 5 — Archivist's reference (cross-reference) card, Bath Paper Mills Company, Edgefield District, S.C.; Wm. K. Huse, Agent, asks detail of certain men; no date, no figures
A printed Confederate Archives reference card, filmed face up against a black mask, the printed matter being on the back and showing through only as faint ghosting. The card is smooth white stock, cleaner and whiter than the two buff jackets, with one soft horizontal crease low down and a white emulsion scratch across it. Three kinds of marking share the face. The heading and the note of subject are in fine black ink in a neat late-nineteenth-century clerical hand. Below them is a purple-black typewritten block in small capitals, of which the second and third lines have been struck through by hand with a single heavy ink rule each — the typewriting is unevenly inked, several letters printing only in part. Below that, in the same fine ink hand as the heading, is a second name and command, with a large solid ink blot shaped like a nib-wipe standing just to its left. Through the paper at the foot the printed back reads in mirror: a bold line "Reference Card — Confederate Archives" over a smaller line of instruction that cannot be made out; a fainter printed form with two or three ruled fields ghosts through the middle of the card. No dates of any kind and no money.
Bath Paper Mills Company
Edgefield Dist. S.C.,
Wm K. Huse. - Agent.
asks detail of certain men
SEE PERSONAL PAPERS OF
T̶h̶o̶m̶a̶s̶ ̶W̶.̶ ̶B̶a̶s̶s̶,̶ [struck through]
F̶o̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶M̶a̶s̶t̶e̶r̶.̶ [struck through]
D. Cummings.
[blot] 5' S. C. Reserves.
[card otherwise blank]
[showing through from the printed back, in mirror:]
Reference Card — Confederate Archives
[second, smaller printed line illegible]
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) This is a modern archivist's finding-aid card, not a Confederate document. It carries no 1860s date and belongs to the same era as the April 1893 handstamp on Image 4. Do not calendar it among the wartime papers. (2) It confirms two things about the firm that the accounts do not: the mill lay in Edgefield District, South Carolina, and Wm. K. Huse was its agent — the same spelling as Image 4. (3) The subject is given only as "asks detail of certain men" — that is, the agent applied for men to be detailed from military service to work the mill. No such letter appears in Images 1–10; if it survives it is later in the file or elsewhere, and the card itself says the papers are filed under a soldier's name, not the company's. (4) The typed reference to Thomas W. Bass, Forage Master, is struck out and replaced in ink by D. Cummings, 5' S. C. Reserves — the card was re-pointed after the first cross-reference was found wrong. Both names are recorded here because the cancelled one is still legible and is part of the record. (5) The regiment is written "5'" with a small raised mark after the figure; it is almost certainly an abbreviation for 5th, but the letters are not formed and I will not print "5th" as a reading. (6) "Dist." for District is written with the t crossed high and could be read "Disct."; the sense is not in doubt. (7) The mirrored printing at the foot is legible only as far as "Reference Card — Confederate Archives"; the line of instruction beneath it is too faint on this exposure to read at all.
Image 6 — TWO documents: (a) docket, Bath Paper Mills Comp[y], October 11, 1862, $915.00, with Rebel Archives handstamp; (b) the account itself — 54 bundles Manilla (cartridge) paper, 3,050 lb at 30¢, receipted Augusta, Ga., of Major W. S. Downer, $915.00
Two sheets, or the two faces of one sheet, photographed one above the other in a single frame, each on its own black mask. (a), above, is the blank outer face of a large account sheet folded into four vertical panels and once horizontally; the fold lines stand out as pale bands and the top edge is torn away in a ragged bite about two inches wide just left of centre, cutting into but not through the first line of writing. The docket is written on the second panel in a fine, well-formed clerical hand in black ink, each line ruled off beneath with a long stroke. In the centre of the panel, struck firmly in black, is a large oval handstamp with double ring: RECORD DIVISION, around the top, WAR DEPARTMENT. around the bottom, a five-pointed star at each side, and REBEL ARCHIVES. in a smaller inner oval. The printed heading, ruled columns, certificate and receipt lines of the account show through from the other side in mirror image on the outer panels. (b), below, is that account's printed face: a wide Confederate States of America billhead, ruled with about twenty money lines, three narrow money columns and a REMARKS column at the right, printed in blackletter and roman. It carries only two lines of entry; everything below is empty ruled paper. The ink is black, the hand round and legible. The printed certificate — "I CERTIFY that the above account is correct and just, amounting to ______ and that the property has been received and will be accounted for." — is left entirely blank and unsigned. The receipt below it is filled in and signed. The same four-panel folds cross the sheet, one of them running through the signature.
(a) DOCKET
No 41
------------
Bath Paper Mills Comp[y]
-------------------------------
Octob. 11th 1862
---------------------
Ordnance Service in all
---------------------------------
its branches $ 915. 00
-----------------------------------
[oval handstamp, centre:]
RECORD DIVISION,
★ REBEL ARCHIVES. ★
WAR DEPARTMENT.
(b) ACCOUNT
Confederate States of America, To Bath Paper Mills Company Dr.
===========================================================================
| REMARKS.
186 2 | Ordnance Service in all its branches |
October 1st| 54 Bundles Manilla (Cartridge) Paper |
| |
| 13 & 16½ = 3050 lbs @ 30¢ $915|00 |
| |
| [all remaining lines blank] |
I CERTIFY that the above account is correct and just, amounting to
____________________________________________________________
and that the property has been received and will be accounted for.
______________
RECEIVED, Augusta Ga. October 11th ———— 186_2_ of
Major W. S. Downer ———— Nine Hundred and Fifteen ————
————————— Dollars ———— Cents, in full of the above account. Bath Paper Mills Company
SIGNED DUPLICATES. by Wm K. Huse Agent.
Checks: 3,050 lb × 30¢ = 91,500¢ = $915.00. The single extension is entered as $915.00 and there is no separate footing on this form, the extension standing as the total. The docket figure, $915.00, agrees exactly. The receipt is written for "Nine Hundred and Fifteen" dollars, with the cents blank struck through with a dash — agreeing exactly. Proves exactly at $915.00.
Flagged: (1) The docket (a) belongs to the account (b). Firm, date (October 11, 1862), figure ($915.00) and the mirrored show-through of this very billhead all agree; they are the two faces of one sheet. (2) Two different dates on one document, and both are right: the paper was delivered "October 1st" (the date column of the account), and the money was received "October 11th" at Augusta (the receipt and the docket). Do not collapse them. (3) The place of receipt is Augusta, Ga. The mill is at Bath, S.C., but Bath is nowhere named on either face. (4) "13 & 16½" is the sheet size in inches, not a sum: the entry reads that 54 bundles of 13-by-16½-inch Manilla cartridge paper weighed 3,050 lb, charged at 30 cents the pound. The symbol between the two figures is a looping "&" or "x" and I cannot say which; the sense is the same. (5) The company is written Bath on both faces; on the docket it is abbreviated "Comp" with a raised terminal letter, read here as Comp[y]. (6) The certifying officer's blank is empty. No one signed the "I CERTIFY" clause and the amount is not written into it — the only officer named on the sheet is Major W. S. Downer, and he is named as the person from whom the money was received, not as a signatory. Downer's name is written by the mill's clerk in the body of the receipt; there is no autograph of Downer on this sheet. (7) The rate here, 30 cents a pound, is two and a half times the 12½ cents charged in June 1861 (Image 3) — sixteen months of Confederate inflation, but the comparison is mine and not on the paper. (8) The handstamp here reads its inner line REBEL ARCHIVES, which is almost certainly what the worn stamp on Image 2 also said; that earlier reading should be understood in this light.
Image 7 — Printed docket (verso of a folded account), Bath Paper Mill Co., Augusta, July 22, 1862; Ordnance Service $3,257.55; Rebel Archives handstamp
The outer face of another large account, folded into three broad vertical panels and once across the middle, the docket occupying the centre panel. This one is not written freehand but filled into a printed docket form: bracketed form number at the head, then a printed "To." before the payee line, then a dotted rule for place and date ending in a printed "186_", then two printed cost headings, "ORD. SERV." and "ORD. AND ORD. STORES.", each followed by a printed dollar sign and a long dotted leader. The paper is blue-grey and thin; the top left corner is torn and folded back on itself in the photograph, and a long white emulsion scratch crosses the left panel. Behind the writing, the printed and ruled face of the account shows through from the other side in mirror, faintly but unmistakably — narrow money columns down the left panel and a run of ruled lines. Across the lower centre panel is the same double-ringed oval handstamp seen on Image 6, RECORD DIVISION, / ★ REBEL ARCHIVES. ★ / WAR DEPARTMENT., here struck lightly and legible only in part; a pair of looped ink ciphers ("00"), showing through from the cents column of the account behind, sits across the bottom of the oval. The writing is in black ink in the same round clerical hand as Image 6. The second cost line, ORD. AND ORD. STORES, is left blank.
[NO. 1̶3̶.̶] 1.
T̶o̶. 1. Bath Paper Mill Co................
Augusta, July 22d ..................... 186 2
ORD. SERV........ $ 3257.55 .............
ORD. AND ORD. STORES........ ........... [blank]
[oval handstamp, faint, lower centre:]
RECORD DIVIS[ION],
★ [RE]B[EL] [A]RCHIVES. ★
WAR DEPARTMENT.
Checks: One figure only, $3,257.55, and nothing on this face to prove it against — no quantity, no rate, no extension. Not proved here; it must be tested against the account it dockets.
Flagged: (1) "[NO. 13.]" is printed and is the form number, not the voucher number — and the clerk has struck it through in ink and written "1." beside it, so the voucher number of this paper is 1. Note that it is a different series from the "No 14" of 1861 and the "No 41" of October 1862: those two were written freehand on plain dockets; this one is a numbered printed form. (2) The firm is written here Bath Paper Mill Co, with Mill in the singular — everywhere else in the file it is "Mills". Recorded as written; do not standardise. (3) The place on this docket is Augusta, and the date July 22d, 1862 — earlier than the October 1862 account of Image 6 but on a larger sum. The printed "186" is completed with a "2". (4) The day is written "22" with a small raised terminal letter, read as 22d; the letter is a single stroke and could be a badly formed "nd". (5) $3,257.55 is far the largest figure so far in the file and there is no account beside it in this frame to support it — see whether the following image carries the account it belongs to, and test it on the figure, the date and the place. (6) The looped "00" over the handstamp is show-through from the other side, not a mark made on this face; it should not be read as an endorsement. (7) The printed heading "ORD. AND ORD. STORES." stands empty, so the whole of this voucher was charged to Ordnance Service and none of it to ordnance and ordnance stores — the clerk's own classification, worth recording.
Image 8 — Account, The Confederate States to Bath Paper Mills Company: 165 lb Manilla paper at 15¢ (Dec. 14, 1861) and 10,776 lb at 30¢ (June 4); certified by Capt. J. L. White, C.S.A.; receipted Augusta, Ga., July 21, 1862; $3,257.55
The printed face of the sheet docketed on Image 7 — the same form, bearing the same printed form number. A tall billhead on light laid paper, ruled with about thirty horizontal money lines, five vertical column rules and a REMARKS column down the right-hand side; the printed heading "The Confederate States," in blackletter at the left, "[NO. 13.]" in roman above the payee line, and "To ______ Dr." with the payee written in. The whole is much cleaner and flatter than Images 3 and 6; the folds are soft and the paper only lightly creased, with a faint white scratch down the upper left. Two entries and their extensions fill four lines; the rest of the column is empty ruled paper down to the printed footing "Dollars........". Both extensions are ticked with a small check-mark to their left, and the footing with a check to its right. The REMARKS column carries eight lines of explanation in the same hand, crowded into the narrow width. Below the double rule the printed certificate is filled in and signed by a Confederate officer — the first sheet in this file where that has happened — and below that the printed receipt is filled in and signed for the mill. The ink throughout is black and the hand round, upright and easy.
The Confederate States, [NO. 13.]
To Bath Paper Mills Company Dr.
==================================================================================
186 | REMARKS:
| Showing the objects of the pur-
1861 | chase or expenditure.
December 14 For 165 lbs Manilla Paper at |
15ˣ per pound ✓ 24|75 | For making
June 4 . 10776 lbs Manilla Paper at | Cartridges
30ᵈ per pound ✓ 3232|80 | 911 lbs of
| this paper was
[all remaining lines blank] | taken up for
| last Quarter
| as purchased
Dollars........ 3257|55 ✓ | & not paid for
I certify that the above account is correct and just, amounting to Three thousand two hundred & fifty
seven dollars & fifty five cents, Selma[?] July ................... 1862. J[?]. White
Capt. C.S.A. Comdg
RECEIVED from Capt. James L. White C.S.A. the sum of Three thousand
two hundred and fifty seven ...... dollars & fifty five cents, in full of the above account.
...Augusta, Ga July 21st 186 2 } Bath Paper Mills
} [Signed Duplicates.] Company
by Wm K. Huse Agent
Checks: First item: 165 lb × 15¢ = 2,475¢ = $24.75 — agrees with the extension exactly. Second item: 10,776 lb × 30¢ = 323,280¢ = $3,232.80 — agrees with the extension exactly. Footing: 24.75 + 3,232.80 = 3,257.55 — agrees with "Dollars 3257 55" exactly. The certificate is written for "Three thousand two hundred & fifty seven dollars & fifty five cents" and the receipt for the same words — both agree. The docket on Image 7 reads $3,257.55 — agrees. Proves exactly at $3,257.55 at every step, and the docket proves with it.
Flagged: (1) Image 7 is this sheet's docket. Same printed form number, same total to the cent, same month and year, same place (Augusta), and the mirrored ruling seen through Image 7 is this face. They are two views of one document. (2) The year of the second item is not stated. The date column is headed "1861" against December 14, and the next entry is simply "June 4" with no year written. From the certificate and receipt of July 1862 it must be June 1862, but the sheet does not say so — recorded as written. (3) The place in the certificate reads to me as Selma[?] and I am not sure of it: the capital is heavily flourished and the second letter carries a stray crossing stroke. It is plainly not Augusta, which is written twice elsewhere on the same sheet in a form I can read. Do not print a place for the certificate from this scan without a second opinion. (4) The certifying signature is a single flourished initial before White; the receipt names the same officer in full as Capt. James L. White, C.S.A., so the initial is presumably J, but the letter itself is a blot and loop and I will not call it. The rank line reads "Capt. C.S.A." followed by an abbreviation I read as Comdg. (5) The cent marks are the clerk's own superscripts and differ between the two lines — "15" with a crossed superscript that looks like ˣ, "30" with one that looks like ᵈ. Both are certainly meant for cents, since the arithmetic only works at 15 and 30 cents; I have kept the shapes as written rather than silently printing ¢. (6) The REMARKS note is the most valuable text in the file so far: it states plainly that the paper was "For making Cartridges", and that 911 lb of it "was taken up for last Quarter as purchased & not paid for" — that is, the mill had already delivered that portion in an earlier quarter's return, unpaid, and it is being carried forward here. (7) The 911 lb of the remark is not separately extended in the money columns; it is part of one of the two weights, and the sheet does not say which. Do not add it to the total. (8) A rate of 15 cents in December 1861 against 30 cents in June 1862 — the mill's price doubled in six months. The 12½ cents of June 1861 (Image 3) completes the run. (9) The firm signs itself Bath Paper Mills Company, plural, here — against "Bath Paper Mill Co", singular, on its own docket (Image 7).
Image 9 — Archivist's cross-reference card, Bath Paper Mills Co., Augusta, Ga.; "See H. K. Huse, Agent"; Rebel Archives handstamp; no date, no figures
A narrow white card, taller than it is wide, filmed against a black mask with a black band down its right edge where the card fell short of the frame; that band cuts the tail of the first line. The stock is clean and unfoxed with one soft diagonal crease across the lower third and a white emulsion scratch running with it. Four lines of writing occupy the top quarter, in a fine, even, rather modern hand in black ink — a nineteenth-century archivist's hand, not a wartime clerk's. Below the writing, struck squarely and quite clearly, is the double-ringed oval handstamp: RECORD DIVISION, around the top of the outer ring, WAR DEPARTMENT. around the bottom, a five-pointed star at each side, and REBEL ARCHIVES. in the inner oval — here the best-inked impression of this stamp in the whole run, though its lower right ("DEPARTMENT.") is scuffed and thin. The remaining two-thirds of the card is blank apart from two faint pencil bracket-and-numeral tick-marks. No dates and no money at all.
Bath Paper Mills
Co., Augusta, Ga
See
H. K. Huse, Agent
[oval handstamp:]
RECORD DIVISION,
★ REBEL ARCHIVES. ★
WAR DEP[ARTMENT].
[card otherwise blank]
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) The initial is written H, not Wm. Images 4, 5, 6 and 8 all give the agent as Wm. K. Huse, twice in his own signature. This card gives H. K. Huse, in an archivist's hand of the 1890s. The card is the later and weaker authority: read this as the archivist's slip for Wm, but transcribe what is on the card. Do not index a second man named H. K. Huse. (2) The place given is Augusta, Ga. — where the company was paid — and not Bath, S.C., where the mill stood and where the card at Image 4 places it. Both are true of the firm in different senses; the cards disagree because they were made from different vouchers. (3) The firm is written Bath Paper Mills Co., plural. (4) There is no date of any kind, so this card cannot be tied to a particular voucher; it is a name cross-reference only, pointing the searcher from the company to the agent's own file. (5) The stamp on this card gives the cleanest reading of the oval used throughout: RECORD DIVISION, / ★ REBEL ARCHIVES. ★ / WAR DEPARTMENT. (6) The right edge of the frame is masked in black and the last letters of "Mills" on the first line run under it; they are readable but only just, and a re-scan with a wider frame would settle them.
Image 10 — Letter docket (endorsement panel), Wm. K. Huse, Agent, Augusta, Ga., October 2, 1862 — sends duplicate invoice of cartridge paper and asks a sample of fuze paper; two Rebel Archives handstamps; no figures
The outer face of a folded letter, filmed flat: a large sheet of thin, cream-white writing paper creased into three broad vertical panels and once across the middle, with the endorsement written down the centre panel in the manner of an office register. The hand is a fine, rapid, sharply sloped copperplate in black ink — a clerk of the receiving office summarising the letter for filing, not the writer of the letter itself; each phrase is closed with a long dash or an underscore. Through the paper on the left panel the letter's own text shows in mirror as pale ghost lines. Two impressions of the Record Division oval are struck on this face. The first, on the left panel, is struck on its side, turned about a quarter turn so that RECORD DIVISION, runs vertically down its right-hand edge and REBEL ARCHIVES. lies on end within it; it is the sharper of the two. The second, on the lower centre panel, is upright but faint and grey, its lower ring "WAR DEPARTMENT." only just readable. A single stray ink stroke with a heavy blot at its foot lies on the right panel below the horizontal fold; it forms no letter. A white emulsion scratch crosses the frame at the fold line. No money, no account, no signature of an officer.
October 2. 1862 —
Augusta Gᵃ
Wm K Huse Agt
Sends duplicate Invoice
of Cartridge paper
Will at the
future time make
Fuze paper & asks
for a Sample —
[oval handstamp, left panel, struck sideways:]
RECORD DIVISION,
★ REBEL ARCHIVES. ★
WAR DEPARTMENT.
[the same oval again, lower centre panel, upright and faint:]
RECORD DIVISION,
REBEL ARCHIVES.
WAR DEPARTMENT.
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) This is the one paper in Images 1–10 that names fuze paper, and it is the ground of the whole "paper time fuzes" description attached to the folder. What it actually says is narrower than that: on 2 October 1862 the agent sent a duplicate invoice of cartridge paper, said the mill "Will at the future time make Fuze paper", and asked for a sample. That is a proposal, not a delivery. Nothing in these ten images shows Bath Paper Mills supplying fuze paper, and the file title should not be allowed to imply that it did. (2) The endorsement is a summary written about a letter; the letter itself is not in this frame. Whether it survives elsewhere in the file is not shown here. (3) The place is Augusta, Ga., and the date October 2, 1862 — nine days before the receipt of the $915.00 account (Images 6 and 6a), which was itself for cartridge paper delivered October 1st. The two papers sit naturally together but nothing on this sheet links them, and there is no figure here to test. (4) The agent is written Wm K Huse, plain and without stops, with his style abbreviated to Agt — supporting Wm against the "H. K." of Image 9. (5) The word before "for a Sample" reads asks; the final "s" is faint and it could conceivably be "ask". The sense is unaffected. (6) "Gᵃ" is written with a raised terminal a; "Fuze" is spelt with a z, in the ordnance manner, and is not to be normalised to "fuse". (7) Two strikes of the same handstamp on one sheet, one of them sideways, is worth noting for anyone dating the Record Division's marking of this file: the marking was done carelessly and more than once.
Image 11 — Letter, Agency Bath Paper Mills Co., Augusta, Ga., 2 October 1862, to Major W. S. Downer, Ordnance Depot, Richmond: transmitting duplicate invoices for cartridge paper, $915
Single leaf of light wove writing paper, filling the whole frame, written on the recto only in a fluent commercial hand in black-brown iron-gall ink now faded to a warm grey-brown. At the head is the firm's engraved letterhead: a shield-shaped device at upper left lettered "Book, News, WRAPPING AND ENVELOPE Papers, FOR SALE."; across the top in an engraved italic script, "Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags, Old Rope and Bagging."; below that, between two rules, a small line of type with a pointing-hand device about shipments; and in large shaded display capitals "AGENCY BATH PAPER MILLS CO." with a printed dateline "Augusta, Ga. ____ 186_" whose blanks the writer has filled. The sheet has been folded once vertically (a pale diagonal crease runs top-to-bottom left of centre and crosses several lines without costing text) and twice horizontally; the horizontal folds show as light bands across the middle of the page. No handstamp, endorsement, docket, file number or filing mark appears anywhere on the image. The lower right corner carries a long looping paraph beneath the signature. No damage, staining or loss; the writing is legible throughout except in the signature.
[engraved letterhead]
Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags, Old Rope and Bagging.
[pointing hand] Shipments may be made to us from any Rail Road Depot in Georgia, Tennessee, North or South Carolina.
[shield device:] AGENCY BATH PAPER MILLS CO.
Book, News,
WRAPPING Augusta, Ga. October 2[d?] 1862.
AND
ENVELOPE
Papers,
FOR SALE.
Major W. S. Downer.
Ordnance Depot.
Richmond Va
Dr Sir.
Enclosed I hand you
the duplicate Invoices of the Cartridge paper, made & ship
-ped as ordered. It has been impossible to fill the order before
owing to other heavy Government orders. There was 300 Rms
ordered, 305 Rms shipped. The Fuse paper we have none
on hand now, & have not made any in sometime, &
it will be impossible to make any just at present, but
if you will send us a sample of the quality of the paper
that you want, we will try and match it, as near as
possible, after a little. Please remit for the amt of the
Invoice $915. as soon as convenient, & greatly oblige.
The paper is shipped, per Rail Road, & marked
"Major W. S. D. Ordnance Depot Richmond Va.
The paper being small we could only get this[?] on it.
Yours Truly
W[m] K. Huse
Agent
Checks: Only two quantities and one money figure appear, and none of them is set out as a calculation — 300 Rms ordered against 305 Rms shipped, and an invoice amount of $915. There is no rate, no weight and no extension on this sheet, so there is no arithmetic to prove; the letter merely names the sum billed elsewhere.
Flagged: (1) The signature is the worst passage on the sheet. "W" with a superscript underlined "m" is certain; the middle capital is a heavily flourished script letter that on this page alone reads as easily H as K, and the surname is a tangle of four letters ending "-use" crossed by the paraph, with a tall looped ascender before it that could be taken for a second initial. Read on its own this signature is not resolvable. It is given above as W[m] K. Huse on the authority of three later frames in this same run, where the name is written plainly: the docket on image 12 ("W. K. Huse, agt"), the margin signature on image 13, and above all the large endorsement on image 18 ("W. K. Huse"). The reading is therefore secure, but a reader should know it is secured from the neighbouring documents and not from the strokes on this sheet. (2) The word after "we could only get" is written with the t-crossbar running as a long bar over the whole word; read as "this" on the strength of the terminal descending loop, which is how this hand also forms the "s" of "as". (3) The date's superscript is blotted; "2d" is the reading, "2nd" possible. (4) The firm is printed BATH, not Batch, and the place is Augusta, Ga. — the mills' own address, Bath, S.C., is not named on this sheet; this is the Augusta selling agency's letterhead. (5) The quotation mark opening the shipping mark is never closed by the writer. (6) Proposal only, not in the transcription: the $915 named here is the same sum as the Bath Paper Mills account elsewhere in this file for 3,050 lb of Manila cartridge paper at 30 cents; 305 reams against 3,050 lb would put the reams at 10 lb each, which would tie this letter to that account. That must be tested against the account itself before it is stated as fact.
Image 12 — Docketing panel (back of a folded letter), Augusta, Ga., 11 October 1862, Bath Paper Mills Co., W. K. Huse agent, with a bureau memorandum on procuring paper elsewhere
The frame is turned on its side (landscape) and shows the outside of a letter folded in the usual three vertical panels: a wide blank left panel, the written centre panel, and a blank right panel. The paper is a bluish-white laid stock, thin enough that a ruled account or ledger page behind it shows through as pale vertical and horizontal lines over the right-hand third and along the top. A long horizontal fold crosses the whole width at about mid-height, showing as a bright line where the emulsion caught the crease, and the vertical folds show as dark bands at the panel edges. On the left panel, struck in a pale, almost exhausted grey ink, is the double-oval National Archives handstamp reading RECORD DIVISION, / REBEL ARCHIVES, / WAR DEPARTMENT with a small star at each side; it is impressed at a tilt and is weak but wholly legible. The endorsement on the centre panel is written in a firm dark hand with a fine pen, the last name and title underscored with a single heavy rule. Below it, in a different, hastier and much greyer hand with a broader nib, is a short memorandum of nine short lines, badly faded and partly lost in the fold. Small bracketed frame marks (reading like "13") appear at the top centre and at the right edge — camera or filming marks, not part of the document. No damage or loss to the paper itself.
[handstamp, left panel:]
RECORD DIVISION,
REBEL ARCHIVES,
WAR DEPARTMENT.
[star] [star]
[docket, centre panel:]
Oct 11. 1862
Augusta Ga
Bath Paper Mills Co
W. K. Huse, agt
---------------------
Send, duplicate
Bills &c &c
We will be happy
to procure Paper
elsewhere as we
can easily do —
Venture to assert
that they never
recd money until
receipted vouchers were
in hand —
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) The docket settles the signature on image 11: the agent is W. K. Huse — "W. K. Huse, agt", written large and clear and underscored. The middle initial is K, not H, and the surname is Huse, not House. (2) The docket is dated Oct 11. 1862 and the letter filmed beside it as image 11 is dated October 2d 1862, so the two do not match on date; they agree on place (Augusta, Ga.) and firm (Bath Paper Mills Co., W. K. Huse agent), and the docket's subject — "Send duplicate Bills &c &c" — answers the same business as the 2 October letter, which itself encloses duplicate invoices. It is more likely that this panel dockets a second, later letter of 11 October than that it belongs to image 11; do not pair them without testing the intervening frames. (3) The memorandum below the docket is in a second hand and is written from the receiving office's point of view, not the firm's ("they" being the Ordnance Bureau or the paper makers). It is the faintest text in the frame; "Venture to assert", "recd" and "receipted vouchers" are each read with reasonable confidence but every line of it sits at the limit of legibility. (4) The firm is written Bath, not Batch, and the place given is Augusta, Ga.; Bath, S.C. is not named. (5) "agt" is written with a small terminal flourish, not with a superscript.
Image 13 — Letter (first leaf), Agency Bath Paper Mills Co., Augusta, Ga., 11 October 1862, to Major W. S. Downer: vouchers returned, contracts for all the Arsenals and the Post Office Department, and no stock for fuse paper
The same printed letterhead sheet as image 11 — engraved shield at upper left ("Book, News, WRAPPING AND ENVELOPE Papers, FOR SALE."), the script line "Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags, Old Rope and Bagging.", the small shipments line with its pointing hand, and the shaded display capitals "AGENCY BATH PAPER MILLS CO." over a printed "Augusta, Ga. ___ 186_" dateline. Written in the same fluent hand as image 11 but with a wetter, blacker ink and a good deal faster: the writing crowds the lower half of the page, lines running the full width and dipping at the right margin, and two passages are heavily cancelled with dense scribbling that has gone right through the surface tone of the ink. A small ink blot sits below the M of "Major". When the writer ran out of page he turned the sheet ninety degrees and continued up the left-hand margin, so the last three lines of text, the complimentary close and the signature all run vertically from bottom to top along the left edge, overlapping the printed shield. Horizontal folds cross the sheet at about a third and two-thirds height; one fold shows as a light band through the middle lines. No handstamp, docket or file number appears on this face. Camera frame marks (small brackets reading like "13") show at the right edge. No loss, but the cancelled words are unrecoverable.
[engraved letterhead]
Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags, Old Rope and Bagging.
[pointing hand] Shipments may be made to us from any Rail Road Depot in Georgia, Tennessee, North or South Carolina.
[shield device] AGENCY BATH PAPER MILLS CO.
Augusta, Ga. October 11th 1862.
Major W. S. Downer.
Ordnance Depot.
Richmond Va
Dr Sir. Your favor of 7th at
hand. I return the Vouchers signed as requested, &
would remark, that with all of our intercourse. with the
Government Officials, & it has been with the Secy of the
Treasury, Secy of War, & from thence all of the way down,
this is the first instance, we have been called upon to sign
for money, before we have recd it, [six or seven words struck through, illegible]
[four or five words struck through, illegible]. We have recent
-ly recd an yearly contract, from headquarters, for the supply
of all of the Arsenals, within the Confederacy. which together
with our yearly contract with the P. O. Department, will be
with our utmost[?] endeavors, about [the — struck through] capacity of our Mill,
& we dont see therefore, how we can fill your orders, without
we are released from some of our other contracts, by the Government.
We are [two or three words struck through, illegible] laboring under great difficulty, in pro-
curing Stock, to fill our present orders, from the Government,
& unless we have better luck, am greatly afraid we shall
be unable to fill all of our present contracts. Under these
[continued vertically up the left margin:]
Circumstances, if you could procure your Fuse paper elsewhere, you had better do it, as we
have no Stock at present, suitable for making that kind of paper, nor dont know when
we will be able to procure it.
Very Respy Yours
W[m] K. Huse
Agent
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove. The only quantitative statements are qualitative ones: two yearly contracts (all the Confederacy's Arsenals, and the Post Office Department) said together to take up about the capacity of the mill.
Flagged: (1) This is the letter the docket in image 12 answers — same date (11 October 1862), same place (Augusta, Ga.), same firm and same agent, and the docket's memorandum about procuring paper elsewhere echoes this letter's margin note almost word for word. The two frames belong together, and image 12 is this letter's own outer fold. (2) The signature here is legible and settles image 11: "W[m] K. Huse, Agent." (3) Two passages are struck out beyond recovery — one running to the end of the line after "before we have recd it," and continuing across the start of the next line, the other of two or three words after "We are". The cancelling is deliberate and heavy, not a slip of the pen; the first of them plainly carried the writer's complaint about signing for money in advance, but nothing of it can be read and nothing should be supplied. (4) "utmost" is read with reserve; the word carries a cancelling stroke through its middle and may be a correction of another word. (5) "about the capacity" — the definite article is struck and not replaced, so the clerk's text as it stands reads "about capacity of our Mill"; the struck word is left in the transcription in brackets because it is legible under the stroke. (6) "with all of our intercourse. with the Government Officials" — the stop after "intercourse" is the clerk's, not an editorial insertion, and the sentence is left uncorrected. (7) The place is Augusta, Ga. and the firm is printed Bath, not Batch; the mill's own address at Bath, S.C. is again not named. (8) The reference to "an yearly contract, from headquarters, for the supply of all of the Arsenals, within the Confederacy" is the most substantial statement on the sheet and is written plainly; it is transcribed exactly, including "an yearly".
Image 14 — Contract (first leaf), C. S. Central Laboratory (Ordnance), Macon, Ga., 17 December 1862, between W. K. Huse for the Bath Paper Mills Company and Captain J. W. Mallet: 12,400 reams of paper in three descriptions
A tall single leaf of faintly ruled white writing paper, written on the recto only, in a very fine, upright, well-schooled clerical hand quite different from the Augusta letters — deliberate, evenly spaced, and using the printed rules as a baseline. At the head, printed in heavy black-letter, is "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" over a printed dateline "Macon, Ga., ________ 186__" filled in by hand. The three supply clauses are set off by large ornamental capitals A, B and C in the left margin. A vertical crease runs the length of the sheet just left of centre, showing as a white line, and there are faint horizontal folds. Struck across the middle of clause A, at a steep tilt, is the double-oval handstamp RECORD DIVISION, / REBEL ARCHIVES, / WAR DEPARTMENT with stars at the sides — here impressed more heavily than on image 12 and partly obscuring three or four words of the clause, though all of them can still be read under it. "Agent" is interlined above the line with a caret after "Augusta Ga". Small camera frame marks show at the right edge. The text breaks off at the foot of the page in mid-agreement and continues on a further leaf. No damage or loss.
C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)
Macon, Ga., December 17th 186 2
This agreement made and entered
into this 17th ---- day of December 1862, by and
^Agent
between W[m] K. Huse of Augusta Ga, of the Bath Paper
Mills Company, party of the first part and
J. W. Mallet Captain P A C S. Superintendent of
Confederate States Laboratories. — as Agent for
the Government of the Confederate States
party of the second part. Witnesseth:
1st That
the said party of the first part hereby agrees
and binds himself to supply: for the the service
of the Ordnance Bureau of the Confede-
rate States, the following quantities and kinds
of paper: to wit:
A. Four hundred (400) reams of a thin strong smooth
and uniform paper in sheets sixteen and a half (16 1/2) inches
long and thirteen (13) inches wide and weighing six (6)
pounds to the ream.
B. Four thousand (4000) reams of a fine stout and uniform
paper in sheets twenty nine (29) inches long and nine-
teen and five eighths (19 5/8) inches wide and weighing thir-
teen (13) pounds to the ream.
C. Eight thousand (8000) reams of a strong smooth uni-
form paper in sheets sixteen and a half (16 1/2) inches
long and thirteen (13) inches wide, and weighing fourteen (14)
pounds to the ream.
Checks: The sheet carries quantities, dimensions and ream weights but no rates, no extensions and no footing, so there is nothing on it to prove. The products are set out here only as a reader's aid and are computed, not transcribed: A, 400 reams at 6 lb = 2,400 lb; B, 4,000 reams at 13 lb = 52,000 lb; C, 8,000 reams at 14 lb = 112,000 lb; the three together 12,400 reams and 166,400 lb. None of these figures appears on the page.
Flagged: (1) The handstamp lies across clause A and blots the words "reams", "sheets", "wide" and "weighing"; each is still recoverable from the surviving strokes and from the parallel wording of clauses B and C, but a reader should know they are read through an overprint. (2) "for the the service" is the clerk's own repetition and is left standing. (3) "Captain P A C S." is written without full stops between the letters; expanded it is Provisional Army, Confederate States, but the expansion is a proposal, not on the page. (4) "Agent" after "Augusta Ga" is an interlineation with a caret, in what appears to be the same ink and hand as the body. (5) The date is written both in the printed dateline and again in the body, and the two agree at 17 December 1862. (6) The firm is written Bath Paper Mills Company — Bath, not Batch — but the place attached to Huse is Augusta, Ga.; Bath, S.C. is not named on this leaf. (7) The document is incomplete in this frame: it ends after clause C with the agreement unfinished, and the terms of price, delivery and payment must be on a following leaf.
Image 15 — Contract (second leaf, verso of the Macon letterhead), 17 December 1862: clauses D and E, manufacture at the Bath Paper Mills, delivery at the C. S. Arsenal Augusta, one sixth per month from 1 January 1863
The back of a C. S. Central Laboratory letterhead sheet, in the same fine upright clerical hand and the same faintly ruled stock as image 14. Along the top edge the printed black-letter heading "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" shows through from the other side in mirror image, which fixes this leaf as the verso of a sheet of that letterhead rather than a separate sheet. The two remaining supply clauses are again set off by large ornamental capitals D and E at the left. The same vertical crease runs the height of the page just left of centre. The ink is a little browner and the pen a little drier than on image 14, and one word ("well") has been written over another and blotted. There is no handstamp on this face and no docket, file number or endorsement. Small camera frame marks show at the edges. The text runs to the foot of the page and stops mid-agreement, so a third leaf carrying price, payment, penalty and the signatures must follow.
[mirror-image show-through of the printed heading: C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)]
D Four thousand (4000) reams of a strong, moderately
thick and uniform paper in sheets. twenty (20) inches long
and eighteen (18) inches wide and weighing eighteen (18)
pounds to the ream.
E. Two thousand (2000) reams of a strong paper with
rough surface in sheets thirty six (36) inches long and
twenty four (24) inches wide and weighing forty (40)
pounds to the ream.
All the paper above described to be manufactured
at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills Company
Augusta Ga. — of the best materials procurable, to
be cut into Sheets of the respective sizes above named
(said sheets not to be folded) and to be delivered at the
C. S. Arsenal Augusta or upon the cars at the Rail
road Station of Augusta Ga. as may be required by the
said party of the second part in good order and
condition and Securely packed in well made boxes
of moderate size.
The said paper
to be delivered as speedily as possible, not less than
one sixth (1/6th) of the entire quantity ordered of each
kind of paper to be delivered per month.
Deliveries to Commence by January 1st 1863.
Said paper to be subject to the inspection and approval
of the said party of the second part; and such pos
sible changes, at any stage of the manufacture
to be made in the character of each kind of paper
as may be required by said party of the second
part.
Checks: Again quantities, dimensions and ream weights but no rates, no extensions and no footing — nothing on the sheet to prove. Computed as a reader's aid and not transcribed: D, 4,000 reams at 18 lb = 72,000 lb; E, 2,000 reams at 40 lb = 80,000 lb. Taken with clauses A, B and C on image 14 the five descriptions come to 18,400 reams and 318,400 lb, and the one-sixth-per-month delivery rate would carry the contract over six months from 1 January 1863. None of these totals is written anywhere on either leaf.
Flagged: (1) The clause naming the place of manufacture reads "at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills Company Augusta Ga." — the contract attaches Augusta, Georgia, to the mills themselves, though the company's mills stood at Bath, South Carolina, and Augusta was the address of its selling agency. Whether the clerk wrote loosely or the parties meant the Augusta agency's warehouse is not settled by the document; the reading is certain, the meaning is not. The firm is again written Bath, not Batch. (2) Delivery is specified twice over — at the C. S. Arsenal Augusta, or on the cars at the railroad station of Augusta, Ga. — at the second party's option. (3) In "packed in well made boxes" the w of "well" is written over an earlier letter and heavily blotted; the reading is secure from the rest of the word. (4) Clause D lacks the full stop after its letter that the other four clauses carry, and has a stray stop after "sheets"; both are left as written. (5) The leaf ends in mid-agreement after the inspection clause: no price, no payment terms, no penalty clause and no signatures appear in this frame.
Image 16 — Contract (third leaf), 17 December 1862: samples clause, and the rates — 50 cents a pound for papers A and B, 30 cents for C, D and E; 20 per cent retained; payment half in Treasury notes, half in seven per cent bonds
Another leaf of the same faintly ruled stock and the same fine upright clerical hand, written on one side only and carrying no printed heading and no show-through of one, so this is an ordinary sheet rather than a second piece of the Macon letterhead. The five rate paragraphs are again keyed by large ornamental capitals A, B, C, D and E standing clear in the left margin, each hanging below the line it belongs to, and each paragraph is introduced by the words "For the" carried up to the right-hand end of the preceding line — a habit of this clerk that makes the page read awkwardly but leaves no ambiguity. A vertical crease runs the full height just left of centre and a horizontal fold crosses at about one third. The ink is even and unfaded. No handstamp, docket, file number or endorsement on this face; small camera frame marks at the top. The leaf ends in mid-sentence at the foot of the page, the agreement still running on.
Samples of the first portion of each kind of
paper to be Sent as soon as manufactured,
to the said party of the second part.
2nd For all the paper delivered by the said
party of the first part in accordance with
the above specified conditions, the said party
of the second part hereby agrees and binds himself
on behalf of the Confederate States, to pay at
the following rates, to wit:
For the
first named paper, distinguished by the letter
A. at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound.
For the
second named paper distinguished by the letter
B. at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound.
For the
third named paper distinguished by the letter
C. at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
For the
fourth named paper distinguished by the letter
D. at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
And for the
fifth named paper distinguished by the letter
E at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
Not less than ten thousand (10000)
pounds of paper to be paid for at any one
time, and twenty (20) per cent upon the value of
all the paper delivered to be retained until the
fulfilment of the contract. Payments to be made
one half in Confederate States Treasury notes and one
half in seven per cent C. S. Bonds.
Checks: The sheet states rates but sets out no quantity, no extension and no footing, so once again there is nothing written on it to prove. Computed from the quantities and ream weights on images 14 and 15 and the rates here — none of these figures is on any of the three leaves: A, 2,400 lb at 50 cents = $1,200; B, 52,000 lb at 50 cents = $26,000; C, 112,000 lb at 30 cents = $33,600; D, 72,000 lb at 30 cents = $21,600; E, 80,000 lb at 30 cents = $24,000; the whole contract $106,400, of which the 20 per cent retention would be $21,280. Treat all of that as derived, not as the document's own arithmetic.
Flagged: (1) The rates are stated per pound, not per ream, while the quantities on the two preceding leaves are stated in reams with a declared weight per ream; the contract is therefore priced on weight and ordered on count, and the two are reconciled only through the stated ream weights. (2) Clause E's letter carries no full stop where the other four do, and clauses C, D and E end without a full stop; all are left as written. (3) The 30-cents-per-pound rate for papers C, D and E is the same rate charged on the Bath Paper Mills account elsewhere in this file for Manila cartridge paper — that is an observation for comparison, not a statement that the two documents concern the same paper. (4) Payment in halves — Confederate States Treasury notes and seven per cent C. S. bonds — is written plainly and is the single most quotable term on the leaf. (5) The leaf ends without price qualification, penalty, term, or signatures; at least one further leaf is wanting from this frame.
Image 17 — Contract (final leaf), 17 December 1862: attestation clause and signature of J. W. Mallet, Captain, Superintendent C. S. Laboratories — the first party's place left unsigned
A wide, low frame holding the last leaf of the agreement, the sheet lying on its side so that the writing runs across the long dimension. The paper is the same faintly ruled stock as the preceding leaves and the hand is the same fine upright clerical hand; the ink of the body is even, and the signature below it is heavier and blacker, laid on with a broader pen. A vertical crease runs down the sheet left of centre. The greater part of the leaf — everything below the signature, roughly two thirds of the surface — is blank. Two scroll seals are drawn in ink at the right, each a closed loop enclosing the letters L.S.: the upper one stands alone with no signature written against it, the lower one closes the line carrying Mallet's signature. Small camera frame marks appear at the top and right edges. No handstamp, docket, file number or endorsement anywhere on the leaf, and no damage.
In testimony whereof, witness our hands and
seals, the day and date first above written.
(L.S.)
J. W. Mallet Capt (L.S.)
Supdt. C. S. Laboratories
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: (1) The upper scroll seal has no name written against it. In an instrument of this form the two seals answer the two parties, and the first party's — W. K. Huse for the Bath Paper Mills Company — is the one left blank. Either this is the Government's retained copy, executed by Mallet and never returned signed by the contractor, or a further leaf carrying Huse's signature is wanting; the document as filmed is signed on one side only. That is a matter of real weight for anyone citing the contract as executed, and it should be checked against the neighbouring frames before the agreement is described as concluded. (2) "Capt" and "Supdt." are written as contractions with the superior letters; expanded they are Captain and Superintendent, but the expansions are not on the page. (3) No date is repeated on this leaf — it refers back to "the day and date first above written", which is 17 December 1862 on image 14. (4) Neither Bath nor Batch, and no place, appears on this leaf; the only place-word is in the office title, C. S. Laboratories. (5) The frame holds one document only, not two, despite the amount of blank paper below the signature.
Image 18 — Docketing panel (outer fold of the 17 December 1862 contract): "Dec 17- 1862 / W. K. Huse"
The outside of the folded contract, filmed upright and filling the frame. The sheet is a leaf of faintly ruled paper, and the ruling — together with a good deal of show-through from the written leaves inside the fold — gives the whole surface a soft striped grey cast. A heavy vertical fold runs from top to bottom a little right of centre, and a horizontal fold crosses the lower third; both catch the light and read as bright lines. A dark grey stain about the size of a thumb sits near the top of the fold, and there are smaller smudges and offsets lower down. The endorsement is written large in the upper right quarter in a soft, blunt-nibbed hand — larger and rounder than the contract's clerical hand and quite unlike the Augusta letters — with a long horizontal flourish trailing from the last letter of the surname. Below it, struck heavily and cleanly in grey ink, is the double-oval handstamp RECORD DIVISION, / REBEL ARCHIVES, / WAR DEPARTMENT with a star above and below; it is the strongest and most complete impression of that stamp anywhere in this run and every word of it can be read. Camera frame marks show at several points around the edges, and along the very bottom of the frame are dark angular shapes that belong to the filming board or to the next item, not to this sheet.
[endorsement, upper right:]
Dec 17- 1862
W. K. Huse -------
[handstamp, centre right:]
RECORD DIVISION,
REBEL ARCHIVES,
WAR DEPARTMENT.
[star above and star below]
Checks: No figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove. The one date, Dec 17- 1862, agrees exactly with the date of the contract on images 14 to 17.
Flagged: (1) This docket does match the document it is filmed beside: date, name and the fold pattern all answer the 17 December 1862 agreement, and this is that instrument's own wrapper. (2) The surname is written here at its largest and clearest anywhere in the run — H, u, s, e — and settles the reading Huse against House. (3) No place is named on the panel: neither Bath, nor Batch, nor Augusta, nor Macon. (4) The endorsement gives only the date and the contractor's name; it carries no file number, no subject line and no register entry, so nothing on this panel identifies which of the Bureau's files it was drawn from. (5) The hand of the endorsement is not the hand of the contract and not the hand of the Augusta letters; it is a receiving office's hand, and no name attaches to it.
Image 19 — Contract, duplicate copy (first leaf), C. S. Central Laboratory, Macon, Ga., 17 December 1862: the same agreement in a second hand, clauses A, B and C
A second, independently written copy of the agreement transcribed at images 14 to 17, on the same printed C. S. Central Laboratory letterhead — "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" in black-letter over the printed dateline "Macon, Ga., ______ 186__" — but in a completely different hand: larger, rounder, more sloping and less disciplined than the fine upright clerk's hand of the first copy, with the writing running out to the extreme right edge and words broken across the margin. The paper is faintly ruled and the ink is a warm brown-black. Struck across the upper left corner, and reading in mirror image, is the double-oval RECORD DIVISION, / REBEL ARCHIVES, / WAR DEPARTMENT handstamp, so the stamp was applied to the other side of this leaf and shows through. A vertical crease runs the height of the sheet left of centre; the top and right edges are ragged and slightly cockled and the right-hand edge of the frame cuts close to the writing. Two words are interlined with carets in clause C, and "Agent" is again interlined after "Augusta Ga". Camera frame marks show at several points. No docket, file number or endorsement on this face.
C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)
Macon, Ga., December 17th 186 2
[mirror-image handstamp across the upper left corner:
RECORD DIVISION, / REBEL ARCHIVES, / WAR DEPARTMENT.]
This agreement made and en
tered into this 17th --- day of December 1862
^Agent
by and between W[m] K. Huse of Augusta Ga, of the
Bath Paper Mills Company party of the first
part, and J W Mallet Captain P: A C S —
Superintendent of Confederate States Labora
tories — as Agent for the Government of
the Confederate States party of the second
part Witnesseth:
1st That the said party of
the first part hereby agrees and binds him
self to supply for the service of the Ordnance
Bureau of the Confederate States, the following
quantities and kinds of paper to wit:
A — Four hundred (400) reams of a thin strong
smooth and uniform paper, in Sheets sixteen and
a half (16 1/2) inches long, and thirteen (13) inches wide
and weighing six (6) pounds to the ream.
B. — Four thousand (4000) reams of a fine
Stout and uniform paper in sheets twenty
nine (29) inches long and nineteen and five eighths
(19 5/8) inches wide and weighing thirteen (13) pounds
to the ream.
^strong
C — Eight thousand (8000) reams of a Smooth uni
form. paper in Sheets sixteen and a half (16 1/2) inches
long and thirteen (13) inches wide. and weighing four
^(14)
-teen pounds to the ream.
Checks: Quantities, dimensions and ream weights only, with no rates, extensions or footing on the leaf — nothing written here to prove. Every figure agrees exactly with the corresponding clause on image 14: 400 reams at 16 1/2 by 13 inches and 6 lb; 4,000 reams at 29 by 19 5/8 inches and 13 lb; 8,000 reams at 16 1/2 by 13 inches and 14 lb. The two copies do not diverge by a digit in this part.
Flagged: (1) This is a duplicate of the same instrument, not a second contract: same date, same parties, same wording, same clause lettering. Anyone counting the Bureau's paper orders from this file must not add the two copies together. (2) The archives handstamp reads in mirror, which places it on the verso of this leaf; that is worth noting because it means the stamped face is not the face filmed here. (3) Clause C carries two interlineations with carets — "strong" inserted before "Smooth", and "(14)" inserted after "four-teen". Both bring this copy into agreement with the first copy's clause C, so they look like corrections made while collating the two, not amendments to the bargain. (4) The ordinal in "1st That" is written as the numeral 1 with a superscript contraction that on the page resembles a double prime; it is expanded here without comment because the parallel copy writes it plainly as 1st. (5) "Captain P: A C S" is written with a colon after the P in this copy, against no stops at all in the other; both are left as written. (6) The firm is written Bath Paper Mills Company — Bath, not Batch — and Huse is again "of Augusta Ga". (7) The right-hand edge of the sheet is cut close by the frame and one or two final letters per line are crowded against it, but nothing is actually lost.
Image 20 — Contract, duplicate copy (second leaf, verso of the Macon letterhead), 17 December 1862: clauses D and E, place of manufacture, delivery at Augusta, one sixth per month, inspection
The verso of the leaf filmed as image 19, in the same large sloping hand and the same warm brown-black ink, on the same faintly ruled letterhead stock. Along the top edge the printed black-letter heading "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" shows through from the recto in mirror image. The writing runs edge to edge and several lines are broken awkwardly across the right margin, where a dark band marks the limit of the sheet; a horizontal fold crosses at about two thirds height and shows as a pale line through three or four lines of text, and a vertical crease runs the height of the page left of centre. Clauses D and E are set off by heavy ornamental capitals in the left margin. The archives handstamp does not appear on this face — the mirror impression seen on image 19 is the stamp struck here, but it falls above the top edge of what this frame shows. Camera frame marks at the top. No docket, file number or endorsement. No loss.
[mirror-image show-through of the printed heading: C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)]
D — Four thousand (4000) reams of a Strong mode
rately thick and uniform paper, in Sheets twenty
(20) inches long and eighteen (18) inches wide and weigh
ing eighteen (18) pounds to the ream.
E Two thousand (2000) reams of a strong paper
with rough Surface, in Sheets thirty Six (36) inches
long, and twenty four (24) inches wide and weighing
forty (40) pounds to the ream.
All the paper above described to be manufac
tured at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills
Company Augusta Ga. of the best materials pro
curable, to be cut into Sheets of the respective
sizes above named ( Said Sheets not to be folded)
and to be delivered at the C. S. Arsenal Augusta
Ga. or upon the Cars at the Railroad Station of
Augusta Ga, as may be required by the Said par
ty of the second part, in good order and con
dition, and Securely packed in well made
boxes of moderate Size
The Said paper to be de
livered as Speedily as possible, not less than one
sixth (1/6th) of the entire quantity ordered of each
kind of paper to be delivered per month.
Deliveries to commence by January 1st 1863
Said paper to be Subject to the inspection and ap
proval of the Said party of the second part,
and Such possible Changes, at any stage of the
manufacture to be made in the Character of each
kind of paper as may be required by Said
party of the second part.
Checks: Quantities, dimensions and ream weights only — no rates, no extensions, no footing, nothing on the leaf to prove. Every figure agrees exactly with clauses D and E on image 15: 4,000 reams at 20 by 18 inches and 18 lb; 2,000 reams at 36 by 24 inches and 40 lb. The delivery fraction (one sixth per month) and the commencement date (1 January 1863) also agree exactly between the two copies.
Flagged: (1) This leaf and image 19 are the two faces of a single sheet, and together they duplicate images 14 and 15. The two copies differ only in hand, in pointing and in the wording "at the Railroad Station" here against "at the Rail road Station" in the first copy; not one figure differs. (2) This copy repeats the first copy's statement that the paper is "to be manufactured at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills Company Augusta Ga." — so the attachment of Augusta to the mills is not a slip of one clerk's pen but stands in both copies, and should be recorded as what the contract says whatever the mills' actual situation at Bath, S.C. (3) "Deliveries to commence by January 1st 1863" is run on at the end of the delivery paragraph here, where the first copy sets it out as a separate line; no words differ. (4) The clerk of this copy capitalises freely in mid-sentence — Sheets, Said, Surface, Subject, Changes, Character, Securely — and every one of those capitals is preserved above. (5) Clause D closes its lettering with a dash and clause E with nothing; "boxes of moderate Size" ends without a full stop. All left as written. (6) As with the first copy, this frame carries no signatures; the executed sheet of this duplicate, if it survives, is not in this frame.
Image 21 — Contract, continuation sheet (2nd of a multi-page agreement): rates per pound for five grades of paper, A–E, and terms of payment; no place or date on this leaf
A single leaf of blue-lined writing paper, photographed alone (one document in the frame), filling the whole frame with a black film border on all sides. The text is written in a practised, flowing clerk's copperplate in dark iron-gall ink, about twenty-four lines running the full width of the sheet, following the faint horizontal rules. A vertical fold-crease runs down the sheet a little left of centre and shows as a pale line through the writing; a second, fainter crease runs down the right-hand quarter. The right edge carries a heavy black horizontal rule (a film artefact or the edge of an adjoining sheet) crossing at about mid-page, and a small dark archival number block is visible at the extreme right margin, twice, but is not legible. The paper is lightly foxed and the surface flecked with small white specks from the film; there is no letterhead, no stamp, no docket, and no signature on this leaf — it is plainly the interior page of a longer instrument. Two authorial corrections survive: a false start "third" written above the line and abandoned, and the word "paper," interlined with a caret; the word "one" is likewise interlined above the line in the last paragraph.
Samples of the first portion of each kind
of paper to be sent as soon as manufactu-
red, to the said party of the second part.
2nd For all the paper delivered by the said
party of the first part in accordance with
the above specified conditions, the said party
of the second part, hereby agrees and binds
himself on behalf of the Confederate States
to pay at the following rates to wit:
For
the first named paper distinguished by the letter
A. at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound
For the
second named paper distinguished by the letter
B. at the rate of fifty (50) cents, per pound.
third For the
^paper,
third named distinguished by the letter
C. at the rate of thirty (30) cents. per pound.
For the
fourth named paper, distinguished by the letter
D. at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound:
And for the
fifth named paper, distinguished by the letter
E at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
Not less than ten thousand (10000)
^one
pounds of paper to be paid for, at any time
and twenty (20) per cent upon the value of all
the paper delivered to be retained until the
fulfilment of the Contract - Payments to be
made, one half in Confederate States Treasury
Notes and one half in seven per cent C.S. Bonds.
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. The only figures are the contract rates (A 50¢, B 50¢, C 30¢, D 30¢, E 30¢ per pound), the minimum payable lot of 10,000 pounds, and the 20 per cent retainage; none of these is an arithmetical statement that can be proved against another figure on the page.
Flagged: the leaf carries no place, no date, no firm name and no signature, so it cannot be tied to Bath Paper Mills Company from its own face — it is an interior page and must be read with the sheets that precede and follow it. The stray "third" above the "third named paper" line is a false start left standing, not struck through; I have set it where it sits rather than deleting it. The word "paper," is interlined over a caret between "named" and "distinguished", and "one" is interlined above "any … time" (reading "at any one time") — both are the clerk's own insertions. The 30¢ rate for grades C, D and E matches the 30¢ per pound charged for Manila cartridge paper on the Augusta billheads elsewhere in this file, which is a proposal for identification only and is not part of the transcription. The dark rule and number block at the right margin are illegible at this resolution.
Image 22 — Contract, closing sheet: testimonium and signature, J. W. Mallet, Capt., Superintendent C.S. Laboratories; no place or date on this leaf
A single leaf of the same blue-lined writing paper as image 21, photographed alone and turned landscape in the frame, so the sheet is wider than it is tall and the writing runs across the long dimension; the black film border is heavy at the left and right and along the bottom. Only the upper quarter of the sheet is written on — three lines of the closing testimonium in the same flowing copperplate and the same dark ink, then a wide blank, then the signature. A vertical fold-crease runs down the left-hand quarter as a pale white line and a horizontal fold shows faintly across the left edge about two-fifths down. Two scroll-flourish seals lettered "L.S." are drawn in ink: the first sits alone at the right-hand end of the testimonium block with the signature line beside it left blank, the second follows Mallet's signature. Mallet's hand is a different, bolder and more angular hand than the body clerk's, in blacker ink, with a long decorative underscore trailing back beneath the surname. The sheet is lightly soiled and shows faint offset ghosting of writing from a facing page in the blank lower half; a single small ink character, resembling a lower-case "f", stands alone near the lower right margin and is otherwise unidentifiable. There is no letterhead, no handstamp and no docket.
In testimony whereof, witness our hands
and seals, the day and date first above
written.
(L.S.)
J. W. Mallet Capt (L.S.)
Supdt C. S. Laboratories.
Checks: no figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: the first (L.S.) seal has no name written against it — the signature line for the other contracting party is blank, so as filmed this leaf is executed by Mallet only. That may mean the sheet is a retained office copy, or that the mill's signature was entered on another copy; either way I have not supplied a name. The surname is read "Mallet" from the letterforms; the terminal letters are drawn into the flourish and the spelling "Mallett" cannot be excluded from the ink alone — recorded here as written. "Supdt" is written with the "dt" raised as a superscript over a rule. Nothing on this leaf names Bath, Augusta, Charleston or any other place, gives a date, or names the firm, so its attachment to the Bath Paper Mills contract rests on its position in the file and on the preceding leaf (image 21), not on its own face; the two leaves share paper, rule and hand, which is consistent with their belonging together but is not proof. As a proposal only, and not part of the transcription: John W. Mallet was the officer in charge of the Confederate Ordnance Laboratories under the Ordnance Bureau, which would be the natural signatory for a contract for cartridge and fuze paper. The lone "f"-like mark at the lower right is illegible.
Image 23 — Blank docket / wrapper panel endorsed "Dec. 17 1862" and signed W. K. Huse[?]; War Department Rebel Archives handstamp; no place, no firm, no figures
One sheet only in the frame, portrait, of blue-lined writing paper, otherwise blank but for a short endorsement at the top right. A strong vertical fold runs down the sheet slightly right of centre — the sheet has been folded in half and this is the outer (docket) face; a horizontal fold crosses about a sixth of the way down and a second, sharper one about four-fifths of the way down, showing as a bright white line across the full width. The endorsement is in a small, hurried, sloping hand in brown-black ink, two short lines, preceded by a stubby ink dash at the left. Below it, and struck sideways so that it must be read with the sheet turned a quarter-turn, is the familiar oval double-ruled handstamp of the United States War Department's Rebel Archives, with a five-pointed star at each end. The upper right corner of the sheet is torn and folded back, carrying away an ink mark that cannot be recovered. The paper is soiled and grey overall, with scattered white film specks and faint archival letter marks in the margins; no letterhead, no columns, no figures.
— Dec. 17 - 1862
W. K. Huse[?]
[oval handstamp, reading around the ring:]
WAR DEPARTMENT. / REBEL ARCHIVES. / RECORD DIVISION,
[with a star above and a star below the centre]
Checks: no figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: the surname is uncertain. The letters after the capital H read most nearly "u-s-e", giving "Huse", but "Hase" and "Hale" are all possible from the strokes and the terminal is drawn out into a long flourish; recorded as "Huse[?]". The endorsement gives a date but no place, no firm name, no sum and no subject, so on its own face this leaf cannot be matched to any particular account: it names neither Bath nor Batch, nor Augusta or Charleston. It stands in the film immediately after the contract's closing sheet (image 22) and is folded like the outer panel of that instrument, which is consistent with its being the contract's own docket, but nothing on either leaf proves the connection — the contract leaves carry no date to test "Dec. 17 1862" against, and this leaf carries no figure to test against theirs. The torn upper-right corner has cost an ink mark of unknown content. The oval handstamp is a post-war United States archival mark, not a Confederate one.
Image 24 — Contract, first sheet: C.S. Central Laboratory (Ordn.), Macon, Ga., 17 December 1862, between Wm. K. Huse of Augusta, Ga., agent of the Bath Paper Mills Company, and Capt. J. W. Mallet; specifications for papers A, B and C
One document in the frame: the opening leaf of the agreement, portrait, on white wove paper faintly ruled, with a printed two-line letterhead at the head in heavy black-letter and roman type — "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" over "Macon, Ga., ________ 186_" with a ruled blank for the date and the "2" of the year supplied by hand. The body is written in a large, confident, forward-sloping clerk's hand in black iron-gall ink, the same hand as images 21 and 22, running about thirty lines to the foot of the sheet with the paper grades marked off by big drawn capitals A, B and C standing clear in the left margin. A vertical fold-crease runs down the sheet just left of centre; the paper is clean but for grey mottling and scattered white film specks, and the lower right corner is dark where the film border encroaches. Struck across the upper left corner, sideways, so that it reads with the sheet turned a quarter-turn, is the oval double-ruled "WAR DEPARTMENT. / REBEL ARCHIVES. / RECORD DIVISION," handstamp with its stars — a post-war United States archival mark. The word "Agent" is interlined above the line with a caret after "Augusta Ga."
C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)
Macon, Ga., ___December[?] 17th__ 186 2
This agreement made and entered
into this 17th day of December 1862 by and
^Agent
between Wm K. Huse of Augusta Ga. of the
Bath Paper Mills Company party of the first
part and J. W. Mallet Captain P.A.C.S. -
Superintendent of Confederate States Labora-
tories - as Agent for the Government of the
Confederate States, party of the second part
Witnesseth:
1st. That the said party of the first
part hereby agrees and binds himself to sup-
ply for the service of the Ordnance Bureau
of the Confederate States, the following quan-
tities and kinds of paper; to wit:
A Four hundred (400) reams of a thin strong
smooth and uniform paper in sheets sixteen and a
half (16 1/2) inches long and thirteen (13) inches wide
and weighing six (6) pounds to the ream.
B Four thousand (4000) reams of a fine stout
and uniform paper in sheets twenty nine (29)
inches long and nineteen and five eighths (19 5/8)
inches wide and weighing thirteen (13) pounds to
the ream.
C Eight thousand (8000) reams of a strong smooth
uniform paper in sheets sixteen and a half (16 1/2)
inches long and thirteen (13) inches wide and weighing fourteen
(14) pounds to the ream.
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. The only multiplications the sheet itself invites are reams times ream-weight, and those are not written out here: 400 × 6 = 2,400 lb of A; 4,000 × 13 = 52,000 lb of B; 8,000 × 14 = 112,000 lb of C. Those three products are mine, derived, not the clerk's, and no figure on this leaf states or contradicts them.
Flagged: the month written on the printed date line is doubtful. Its initial capital is crossed by the descending "y" of the printed "Laboratory" and the closing parenthesis of "(Ordn.)", and the letters that follow read to the eye as "o-c-e-m-b-e-r"; the whole is compatible with either "December" or "November". The body of the same document, in the same hand and unobscured, plainly reads "this 17th day of December 1862", and the docket at image 23 reads "Dec. 17 1862", so I have set the header as "December[?]" and record the doubt here rather than smoothing it away. The firm is written "Bath Paper Mills Company" — Bath, not Batch — and this leaf is the only one in this range that names the firm at all. The place of execution on the face is Macon, Georgia (the printed letterhead); Huse is described as "of Augusta Ga."; Bath itself is not named on this leaf. "Wm K. Huse" here settles the surname left doubtful on the docket at image 23, and the "Dec. 17 1862" of that docket matches this document's date exactly, which is good evidence the docket belongs to this contract. "P.A.C.S." after Mallet's rank is written as four initials with stops. This leaf, image 21 (rates and terms) and image 22 (testimonium and signature) share paper, hand and ink and evidently form one instrument, filmed in the order 24 – 21 – 22 – 23, that is, out of order.
Image 25 — Contract, second sheet: specifications for papers D and E; manufacture at the Bath Paper Mills Company's mills, Augusta, Ga.; delivery at the C.S. Arsenal, Augusta; deliveries to commence by 1 January 1863
One document in the frame, portrait: the second written page of the same agreement, on the same white wove faintly ruled paper and in the same large sloping hand and black ink as image 24. At the very head of the sheet, faint and reversed, the printed letterhead "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" shows through from the other side — this is the back of the printed leaf, so the letterhead reads mirror-wise. Grades D and E are set off by big drawn capitals in the left margin, matching A, B and C on the recto. The vertical fold-crease from the recto runs down the sheet just left of centre; the ink is even and unfaded throughout, the paper lightly speckled with white film flecks, the extreme left and right edges dark with the film border, and a small archival letter mark shows twice in the left margin. There is no handstamp on this face, no docket, no signature; the text simply runs on and breaks off at the foot of the sheet.
[at the head, showing through reversed from the recto: C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)]
D Four thousand (4000) reams of a strong moder-
ately thick and uniform paper in sheets twenty
(20) inches long and eighteen 18 inches wide and
weighing eighteen (18) pounds to the ream.
E Two thousand (2000) reams of a strong paper
with rough surface in sheets thirty six (36) inches
long and twenty four (24) inches wide, and weigh-
ing forty (40) pounds to the ream.
All the paper above described to be manu-
factured at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills
Company Augusta Ga. of the best materials
procurable, to be cut into sheets of the respective
sizes above named (said sheets not to be folded)
and to be delivered at the C. S. Arsenal Augus-
ta or upon the cars at the Railroad station of
Augusta Ga. as may be required by the said party
of the second part, in good order and condition
and securely packed in well made boxes of moder-
ate size
The said paper
to be delivered as speedily as possible, not less than
one sixth (1/6th) of the entire quantity ordered of each
kind of paper to be delivered per month.
Deliveries to Commence by January 1st. 1863.
Said paper to be subject to the inspection and approval
of the said party of the second part and such
possible changes, at any stage of the manufacture
to be made in the character of each kind of paper
as may be required by said party of the second part.
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. As with the recto, the only products the text invites are reams times ream-weight, and they are not written out: 4,000 × 18 = 72,000 lb of D; 2,000 × 40 = 80,000 lb of E. Those two products are derived by me, not by the clerk, and nothing on the sheet states or contradicts them.
Flagged: the firm is written "Bath Paper Mills Company", Bath and not Batch, and is here placed at Augusta, Ga. — "manufactured at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills Company Augusta Ga." The clerk gives the company's post-office town rather than the mill village of Bath, South Carolina, some twelve miles off; that is the clerk's usage and I have not altered it. Delivery is to be at the C. S. Arsenal, Augusta, or on the cars at the Augusta railroad station, so Augusta is named three times on this leaf and Bath, S.C., not once. In grade D the width is written "eighteen 18 inches" — the figure is given without the parentheses used everywhere else on the sheet, and I have kept it so. The fraction in "one sixth" is written as a small 1 over 6 with a raised "th"; I have set it "(1/6th)". The word "possible" in the last paragraph ("and such possible changes") is clear in the ink though awkward in sense; it is not "such possible" for "such practicable" or any other reading I can defend, so it stands as written. The sheet carries no date of its own beyond the delivery date, no signature and no place of execution; its attachment to image 24 rests on the mirrored letterhead at the head, which shows the two are the two faces of one leaf.
Image 26 — Contract, duplicate copy, continuation sheet: the same rates per pound for papers A–E and the same terms of payment as image 21, in a second, smaller hand; no place or date on this leaf
One document in the frame, portrait, on blue-lined writing paper very like that of image 21 but written in a plainly different hand — smaller, rounder, more upright, less flourished, and in a thinner, greyer ink that has bitten less deeply. The text runs about twenty-eight lines to the foot, following the rules, with drawn capitals A to E at the left margin of the rate clauses. A vertical fold-crease runs down the sheet a little left of centre and shows white through the writing; the sheet is grey and evenly soiled, flecked with white film specks, the left and right edges lost in the black film border, and a small archival letter mark appears twice in the margins. In the fourth-rate clause the word "paper" has been written over an earlier word and stands as a dark blot. No letterhead, no handstamp, no docket, no signature — an interior leaf, and word for word the counterpart of image 21.
Samples of the first portion of each kind of
paper to be sent as soon as manufactured, to the
said party of the second part.
2nd For all the paper delivered by the said
party of the first part in accordance with
the above specified conditions, the said party
of the second part hereby agrees and binds
himself on behalf of the Confederate States
to pay at the following rates to wit:
For the first
named paper, distinguished by the letter.
A at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound.
For the
second named paper distinguished by the letter
B at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound.
For the
third named paper distinguished by the letter
C at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound.
For the
fourth named paper[blotted, written over] distinguished by the letter
D at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
And for the
fifth named paper distinguished by the letter
E at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound.
Not less than ten thousand (10.000) pounds
of paper to be paid for at any one time and
twenty (20) per cent upon the value of all the
paper delivered to be retained until the fulfil
ment of the Contract. Payments to be made one
half in Confederate States Treasury Notes and one
half in seven per cent C. S. Bonds
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. The rates (A 50¢, B 50¢, C 30¢, D 30¢, E 30¢ per pound), the ten-thousand-pound minimum and the twenty per cent retainage agree figure for figure with the corresponding clauses on image 21; that agreement is the only test the two sheets afford, and they pass it.
Flagged: this leaf is a second copy of the text on image 21 — the two agree in substance and very nearly in wording, but they are in different hands and differ in small points, and neither should be treated as a transcript of the other. The differences I can see: this copy writes the ten thousand as "(10.000)" where image 21 writes "(10000)"; this copy has "at any one time" written straight, where image 21 has "one" interlined over a caret; this copy has no false start before "third named paper", where image 21 has a stray "third" standing above the line; this copy ends grade E "cents per pound." with a stop, image 21 without; and this copy sets a comma after "named paper," in the first clause only. In the fourth clause the word "paper" is written over something else and is now a blot: the reading "paper" comes from the sense and from the four parallel clauses, and the underlying word cannot be recovered, so I have marked it. The leaf gives no place, no date, no firm name and no signature; nothing on its face says Bath, Batch, Augusta or Charleston. Its place in the file suggests it belongs with a duplicate original of the Macon contract of 17 December 1862, but that is inference from the neighbouring sheets, not from this one.
Image 27 — Contract, duplicate copy, closing sheet: testimonium in the second hand, signed J. W. Mallet, Capt., Supdt. C.S. Laboratories; no place or date on this leaf
One document in the frame, turned landscape so the sheet is wider than tall, on the same blue-lined writing paper as image 26 and written in the same smaller, rounder, upright hand and thin grey ink. Only the upper fifth of the sheet is used: two lines of testimonium, then a wide blank, then the signature; the rest of the leaf is empty. A vertical fold-crease runs down the left-hand third as a bright white line the full height of the sheet. Two "L.S." scroll seals are drawn in ink — the first standing alone at the right of the testimonium with the signature line beside it left blank, the second following Mallet's signature. Mallet's autograph is again in a bolder, blacker, more angular hand than the body clerk's, with the long decorative underscore trailing back beneath the surname. The paper is grey and evenly toned, faintly foxed, with a few small archival letter marks in the left margin; heavy black film border on all four sides. No letterhead, no handstamp, no docket.
In testimony whereof, witness our hands and
seals, the day and date first above written
(L.S.)
J. W. Mallet Capt. (L.S.)
Sup.dt C. S. Laboratories
Checks: no figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: as on image 22, the first (L.S.) seal has no name written against it — the signature line for the party of the first part is blank, so this copy too is executed by Mallet alone as filmed, and I have supplied no name. The surname reads "Mallet" from the letterforms; the ending is drawn into the flourish and "Mallett" cannot be ruled out from the ink alone. The abbreviation here is written "Sup." with a stop and then a raised "dt", where image 22 has "Supdt" without the stop — a small difference between the two copies. The testimonium on this leaf ends without a full stop; image 22 ends "written." with one. Nothing on the leaf gives a place, a date or the firm's name, so its attachment to the duplicate contract rests on the matching paper, hand and ink of image 26 and on its position in the film, not on its own face. This is the second of the two closing sheets in the range (the first at image 22), which confirms that the file holds two copies of the same instrument, each signed by Mallet.
Image 28 — Blank docket / wrapper panel of the duplicate copy, endorsed "Dec 17 - 1862" and signed W. K. Huse; War Department Rebel Archives handstamp; no place, no firm, no figures
One sheet only in the frame, portrait, of blue-lined writing paper, blank but for a two-line endorsement at the top right. The sheet has been folded in half vertically — the fold runs down the middle and the right-hand half, the outer face when folded, carries all the writing and all the dirt; a sharp horizontal fold crosses about three-quarters of the way down and shows as a bright white line the full width. The right-hand half is heavily soiled and stained, with a broad dark smear running down the right edge and pooling around the endorsement, so the writing is partly lost in the grime; the left half is comparatively clean. The endorsement is in the same small, hurried, sloping hand as image 23, in brown-black ink. Below it, struck sideways and read with the sheet turned a quarter-turn, is the oval double-ruled "WAR DEPARTMENT. / REBEL ARCHIVES. / RECORD DIVISION," handstamp, its lower star clear and its upper one lost in the staining. A small ink blot of two or three strokes stands alone in the left half about two-thirds down; it is not a letter I can read. No letterhead, no columns, no figures.
Dec 17 - 1862
W. K. Huse
[oval handstamp, reading around the ring:]
WAR DEPARTMENT. / REBEL ARCHIVES. / RECORD DIVISION,
[star below the centre; the upper star lost in staining]
Checks: no figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove.
Flagged: this is the counterpart of image 23 — the same date, the same name, the same hand, the same handstamp — and it is the docket panel of the duplicate copy of the contract (images 26 and 27) as image 23 is of the original (images 24, 25, 21, 22). The surname is easier here than at image 23 and reads "Huse", agreeing with "Wm K. Huse" written out in full in the body of the contract at image 24; on that evidence I would now read image 23's endorsement as "Huse" too, though I have left the query standing there because the ink itself is doubtful. The initials are written close together and the middle "K" runs into the "H" of the surname. The endorsement carries a date but no place, no sum, no subject and no firm name; it names neither Bath nor Batch, Augusta nor Charleston. It matches its neighbours in date — "Dec 17 - 1862" against the contract's "17th day of December 1862" — and that is the one test it can be put to, which it passes. The staining has cost no whole word that I can see, but it thins the ink badly and any reading of the endorsement rests on the clearer twin at image 23 as much as on this sheet. The ink blot in the left half is illegible. The oval handstamp is a post-war United States archival mark, not a Confederate one.
Image 29 — Contract, duplicate copy, first sheet: C.S. Central Laboratory (Ordn.), Macon, Ga., December 17th 1862; Wm. R. Huse of Augusta, Ga., agent of the Bath Paper Mills Company, and Capt. J. W. Mallet; specifications for papers A, B and C
One document in the frame, portrait, the duplicate original of the sheet at image 24: the same printed letterhead — "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" over "Macon, Ga., ________ 186_" in black-letter and roman — but the body written in the smaller, rounder, more upright hand of images 26 and 27, in thinner grey-black ink, rather more crowded on the page and running about thirty-two lines to the foot. Grades A, B and C are set off by drawn capitals at the left margin. Struck across the upper left corner, sideways and here printed upside down as well, is the oval "WAR DEPARTMENT. / REBEL ARCHIVES. / RECORD DIVISION," handstamp with its stars. A vertical fold-crease runs down the sheet a little left of centre; the paper is clean and lightly speckled, the right edge dark with the film border, and small archival letter marks show in the margins. "Agent" is interlined above the line with a caret after "Augusta Ga."; the word "Government" has been corrected mid-word and the letters over-inked; and in clause A the parenthetical figure for the sheet length has been written over and blotted into an illegible mass.
C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)
Macon, Ga., ___December 17th__ 186 2
This agreement made and entered
into this 17th day of December 1862 by and
^Agent
between Wm R. Huse of Augusta Ga. of the
Bath Paper Mills Company party of the first
part and J W Mallet Captain P.A.C.S. Superin
tendent of Confederate States Laboratories - as
Agent for the Government of the Confederate
States party of the second part Witnesseth:
1st That
the said party of the first part hereby agrees
and binds himself to supply for the service
of the Ordnance Bureau of the Confederate
States the following quantities and kinds of
paper, towit:
A Four hundred (400) reams of a thin strong
smooth and uniform paper in sheets sixteen and
a half [illegible, blotted and written over] inches long and thirteen (13) inches wide and
weighing six (6) pounds to the ream.
B. Four thousand (4000) reams of a fine stout
and uniform paper in sheets twenty nine (29)
inches long and nineteen and five eighths (19 5/8) inches
wide and weighing thirteen (13) pounds to the ream
C Eight thousand. (8000) reams of a strong smooth
uniform paper in sheets sixteen and a half (16 1/2)
inches long and thirteen (13) inches wide and weigh
ing fourteen (14) pounds to the ream
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. The quantities, sheet sizes and ream weights agree item for item with the original at image 24 — 400 reams at 6 lb, 4,000 at 13 lb, 8,000 at 14 lb, and the same sheet dimensions — save only the one blotted figure in clause A, discussed below. That agreement between the two copies is the only test available and, blot aside, they pass it.
Flagged: the middle initial of the contractor's name differs between the two copies. This duplicate plainly reads "Wm R. Huse" — the letter has a closed bowl and a kicking leg, an unmistakable capital R — where the original at image 24 has a form with a small loop and a leg that reads as K, agreeing with "W. K. Huse" on both dockets (images 23 and 28). Three witnesses give K and one gives R; I have transcribed each sheet as it stands and made no attempt to reconcile them, and the true middle initial should be treated as unsettled. In clause A the parenthetical sheet length has been over-inked into a blot: the sense, the parallel clause C on this same sheet, and clause A of the original all give sixteen and a half inches, but the strokes themselves cannot be read, so I have marked the passage illegible rather than supply the figure. The month on the printed date line is here written out clearly and unambiguously as "December", which is good corroboration for reading the obscured month on image 24 the same way. The firm is again "Bath Paper Mills Company" — Bath, not Batch. The place on the face is Macon, Georgia (letterhead), with Huse "of Augusta Ga."; Bath, S.C., is not named. Small differences of pointing from the original: this copy writes "J W Mallet" and "P.A.C.S." without some of the stops, runs "Superin-tendent" over the line-break differently, writes "towit" as one word where image 24 has "to wit", and sets "Eight thousand." with a stop before the figure. None of these changes the sense.
Image 30 — Contract, duplicate copy, second sheet: specifications for papers D and E; manufacture at the Bath Paper Mills Company's mills, Augusta, Ga.; delivery at the C.S. Arsenal(s), Augusta; deliveries to commence by 1 January 1863
One document in the frame, portrait: the back of the printed leaf whose front is image 29, in the same small, upright, rounder hand and thin grey-black ink. The printed letterhead "C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)" shows through faintly and reversed at the very head of the sheet, which is how the leaf identifies itself as the verso of image 29. Grades D and E stand off at the left under drawn capitals; the text then runs on in solid paragraphs to the foot of the sheet, where it breaks off in mid-sentence. A vertical fold-crease runs down the sheet a little left of centre. The paper is clean, lightly grey-mottled and speckled with white film flecks, the right edge lost in the black film border, with small archival letter marks in the margins. In clause E a long horizontal ink stroke runs across the line from "with" as far as a word that has been scratched out immediately before "heets"; there is no handstamp on this face, no docket, no signature.
[at the head, showing through reversed from the recto: C. S. Central Laboratory, (Ordn.)]
D Four thousand (4000) reams of a strong mod
erately thick and uniform paper in sheets twenty
(20) inches long and eighteen (18) inches wide and
weighing eighteen (18) pounds to the ream
E. Two thousand (2000) reams of a strong paper
with rough surface in [word scratched out]heets thirty six (36) inches
long, and twenty four (24) inches wide and weigh
ing forty (40) pounds to the ream.
All the paper above described to be manu
factured at the mills of the Bath paper mills
Company Augusta Ga. Of the best materials procura
ble, to be cut into sheets of the respective sizes
above named (said sheets not to be folded) and
to be delivered at the C. S. Arsenals Augusta
or upon the Cars at the Railroad Station of
Augusta Ga as may be required by the said
party of the second part in good order and
condition and securely packed in well made
boxes of moderate size.
The said paper
to be delivered as speedily as possible, not less
than one sixth (1/6th) of the entire quantity ordered of
each kind of paper to be delivered per month.
Deliveries to Commence by January 1st. 1863
Said paper to be subject to the inspection and
approval of the said party of the second part
and such possible changes at any stage of the
manufacture to be made in the character of
each kind of paper as may be required by said
Checks: no money columns and no extensions on this sheet — nothing to foot. The quantities, sheet sizes and ream weights agree item for item with the corresponding sheet of the original at image 25 — 4,000 reams of D at 20 × 18 inches and 18 lb to the ream, 2,000 reams of E at 36 × 24 inches and 40 lb to the ream, the one-sixth monthly minimum, and the 1 January 1863 start. That agreement between the two copies is the only test the sheet affords, and it passes.
Flagged: the sheet breaks off mid-sentence at the foot, "as may be required by said", and the leaf that follows it in the film — image 26, in the same duplicate's hand — begins straight in at "Samples of the first portion of each kind of paper". The four words "party of the second part." that complete the sentence, and which are present in the original at image 25, are therefore missing between the two leaves. Either a face of the duplicate is not filmed in this range, or the duplicate's clerk dropped them in copying; I cannot tell which from what is here, and I have not supplied them. In clause E a word immediately before "heets" is scratched out beyond recovery, evidently a false start at "sheets", and a long horizontal ink stroke runs back from it across "with rough surface in". I read that stroke as a slip of the pen rather than a cancellation, because the words it crosses are needed for the sense and stand uncancelled in the original at image 25 — but a reader who took it for a strike-through would not be contradicted by the ink, so it is recorded here. The place of delivery is written "the C. S. Arsenals Augusta": the terminal letter may be a plural "s" or merely a flourish on the "l", where the original at image 25 has the singular "Arsenal"; transcribed as it appears. The firm is here written "Bath paper mills Company", with lower-case p and m, against "Bath Paper Mills Company" on the original — Bath in both, never Batch — and is again placed at Augusta, Ga. Augusta is named four times on this leaf; Bath, S.C., not at all. Other small departures from the original: "eighteen (18) inches" here where image 25 has the figure without parentheses; "Of the best materials" with a capital O; and no full stop after "1863".
Image 31 — Contract, continuation leaf: paper delivery terms and per-pound rates for papers A–E; no place or date on this leaf
A single leaf of light blue-ruled writing paper filmed as a full page, the whole of it in one clean, practised clerical copperplate in iron-gall ink now brown-black. A vertical fold-crease runs from top to bottom slightly left of centre and shows as a pale line through the writing; a second, fainter vertical crease runs down the right third. The text begins mid-sentence ("party of the second part.") and ends mid-word at the foot ("to be retained un"), so this is an interior leaf of a longer contract — there is no heading, letterhead, signature, docket, endorsement, or handstamp anywhere on it. The five paper grades are called out by large block capitals A, B, C, D and a fifth letter that is heavily inked and appears written over an earlier attempt; each capital is underscored. The film frame is black at the right and bottom edges and a scatter of small white specks (emulsion loss) crosses the sheet without costing any text.
party of the second part.
Samples of the first portion of each kind of
paper to be sent as soon as manufactured
to the said party of the second part.
2nd. For all the paper delivered by the said
party of the first part in accordance with
the above specified conditions, the said party
of the second Part hereby agrees. and
binds himself on behalf of the Confederate
States to pay at the following rates to wit:
For the
first named paper distinguished by the letter
A at the rate of fifty (60) cents per
pound. For the
Second named paper distinguished by the
letter B. at the rate of fifty (50) cents per pound
For the
third named paper distinguished by the letter
C at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound
For the
fourth named paper distinguished by the letter
D at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound.
And for the
fifth named paper distinguished by the letter
E. at the rate of thirty (30) cents per pound.
Not less than ten thousand (10000) pounds
of paper to be paid for at any one time
and twenty (20) per cent upon the value of
all the paper delivered to be retained un
Checks: no extensions or footings on the sheet — nothing to prove by multiplication. The only internal test available is word against figure, and one of the five fails: the rate for paper A is written out "fifty" but the figure in parentheses reads 60 (see Flagged).
Flagged: (1) Paper A — the word is unmistakably "fifty" but the bracketed figure is a closed-loop 6 with an arched entry stroke, quite unlike the flat-topped 5 the same clerk wrote three lines later in "(50)" for paper B. Transcribed as written, "fifty (60)"; the discrepancy is the clerk's, not a reading error, and would have to be settled against the accounts or the signed counterpart. (2) The fifth grade letter is a heavy blot over what looks like a corrected earlier letter; read as "E" from the A-B-C-D sequence, but the letterform itself is not independently legible. (3) No place, no date, no party names on this leaf — the firm is not written out anywhere here, so this sheet cannot on its own be tied to Bath or to Batch. It belongs with the contract leaves elsewhere in this file rather than with any account. (4) "second Part" is capitalised mid-sentence in one place and lower-case elsewhere; kept as written.
Image 32 — Contract, concluding leaf: payment half in Treasury notes, half in seven per cent C. S. bonds; signed by J. W. Mallet, Capt., Supt. C. S. Laboratories; no place or date on this leaf
The closing leaf of the same contract as image 31, in the same clerk's copperplate and the same brown-black iron-gall ink, and filmed in landscape so that the sheet fills the frame with a wide black border top and bottom. It carries on directly from image 31, opening with the broken word "til the fulfilment of the contract". The blue-ruled lines run right across; a vertical fold-crease shows as a pale white line down the left third of the sheet and a shorter one behind the signature. The lower half of the leaf is blank. Two seal marks are drawn freehand in ink — small ovals enclosing the letters "L. S." (locus sigilli). The upper oval stands alone with nothing written on the line to its left: the first party's signature space is empty in this copy. The lower oval sits at the end of the only signature on the sheet, "J. W. Mallet Capt", written in a bold, heavily flourished hand quite different from the body text, with a long sweeping crossbar carried over the surname. Below it, in the same bold hand, "Sup[erintenden]t. C. S. Laboratories". No handstamps, no docketing, no file numbers.
til the fulfilment of the contract Pay
ments to be made, one half in Confederate
States Treasury notes and one half in seven
per cent C. S. Bonds.
In testimony whereof, witness our hands
and seals the day and date first above
written
(L. S.)
J. W. Mallet Capt (L. S.)
Sup^dt. C. S. Laboratories
Checks: no figures on the sheet — no arithmetic to prove. The rates and quantities all stand on the preceding leaf (image 31).
Flagged: (1) The upper (L. S.) has no signature beside it. On a contract of this form the party of the first part — the paper maker — should have signed on that line; in this filmed copy the space is blank, so the firm's own name and the signer for it do not appear. That means neither "Bath" nor "Batch" is written anywhere on images 31–32; the attribution of this contract to the Bath Paper Mills Company rests on its filing position in the file, not on anything on these two leaves. (2) No place of execution and no date appear on this leaf either — the date is on the missing first leaf ("the day and date first above written"). (3) "Sup" is followed by a raised, underscored "dt" and a period; expanded here as Superintendent, and rendered "Sup^dt." in the transcription to show the superscript. (4) The signature is read as "J. W. Mallet"; the terminal letters are swallowed by the flourish, so the surname is secure only from the first four letters plus the known office. Outside the transcription, and offered only as a proposal: John William Mallet was Superintendent of the Confederate States Laboratories at Macon, which would fit the title exactly — but nothing on the sheet says Macon, and this should be verified before print.
Image 33 — Docket (wrapper endorsement), 24 February 1863: Bath Paper Mills, Augusta, Ga., Wm. K. Huse acknowledges receipt of $915 for paper missent the previous October
A folded wrapper or docketing sheet, filmed whole, with the fold running vertically down the middle of the frame; the left half is blank except for the ghost of writing bleeding through from the other side, and all the ink sits on the right half. The hand is a fast, loose, business cursive quite unlike the contract clerk's copperplate of images 31–32 — larger, more sloped, with heavy shaded downstrokes and long trailing terminals; a docketing hand, written to be read at a glance from the outside of a folded packet. Ink is black and still strong. Across the lower part of the written half sits the postwar oval handstamp of the War Department in pale purple-grey: a double oval enclosing REBEL ARCHIVES, with RECORD DIVISION curving over the top, WAR DEPARTMENT. curving under, and a five-pointed star at each side. The stamp overlies no writing and costs no text. No printed form, no rule, no file number.
Feby 24. 1863.
Bath Paper Mills
Augusta Ga
——
Wm K. Huse
Acknowledges
receipt of $915 —
for paper, which
was missent last
October
[oval handstamp:] RECORD DIVISION
* REBEL ARCHIVES *
WAR DEPARTMENT.
Checks: the only figure on the sheet is the sum $915, written once and not extended or footed — nothing to prove by multiplication here. The figure is worth carrying forward: $915 is exactly the total of the specimen account cited from image 6 of this file (3,050 lb of Manila paper at 30 cents = $915.00), so this docket and that account describe the same money. That is a cross-frame observation, not an arithmetic proof on this sheet.
Flagged: (1) The firm is written Bath — B-a-t-h, with a clearly formed h — not Batch. This sheet is the plainest evidence in the range that the drive folder's "Batch" is wrong. (2) The place given is Augusta, Ga., not Bath, S.C. The docket addresses the firm at Augusta, which is where the accounts elsewhere in the file are receipted; the mill itself is at Bath, across the river in South Carolina. Both places belong to this firm and the distinction should be kept. (3) The day of the month is read as 24; the second digit is formed like a lowercase h, which is a common period form of the figure 4 in this hand, but there is no other 4 on the sheet to compare it against. Read as "Feby 24. 1863." (4) "Wm K. Huse" — the surname is legible as Huse; the capital could conceivably be read N, but H is the better fit. His office is not stated on the sheet, and he is not identified as an officer, a clerk, or an agent of the firm. (5) "missent" is written as one word. (6) Whether this docket belongs with the sheet filmed next to it is tested at image 34 below; on its own face it names no voucher number and no account.
Image 34 — Letter, Augusta, Ga., 26 February 1863, Wm. K. Huse, Agent, Agency Bath Paper Mills Co., to Major W. S. Downer, Richmond, Va.: acknowledging a check for $915 for an invoice of paper shipped 23 October
A single leaf of the firm's own printed letterhead, filmed whole in portrait, the paper a pale cream now toned to grey. The printing is fine commercial engraving in black. At the upper left is a shield-shaped device outlined in a thin rule, filled with the advertisement "Book, News, WRAPPING AND ENVELOPE Papers, FOR SALE", the words Book and News set in heavy blackletter and the rest in fat Egyptian capitals. To the right of the shield, two lines of ornamental engraver's script advertise "Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags, Old Rope and Bagging."; below a short rule comes a small roman note headed by a printer's pointing-hand (☞) about shipments by rail; below a second, full-width rule the firm's name is engraved in large script, "Agency Bath Paper Mills Co.", with "Augusta, Ga," beneath it in blackletter followed by a dotted rule for the date. The manuscript is a fast, sloped commercial hand in black ink, thinning to grey where the pen ran dry, with strong flourishes on capitals and a heavy blotted deletion at the start of one line. A single horizontal fold crosses the sheet about two-thirds down and shows as a pale band through three lines of writing; the sheet's lower edge is lifted and curled where the film caught it, and the bottom margin falls away into the black of the frame. No handstamps and no docketing on this face.
[printed shield, left:]
Book, News,
W R A P P I N G
AND
E N V E L O P E
Papers,
FOR SALE
[printed, right:]
Highest Cash Prices Paid for Rags,
Old Rope and Bagging.
————————————————————
☞ Shipments may be made to us from any Rail Road Depot in Georgia,
Tennessee, North or South Carolina.
——————————————————————————————
Agency Bath Paper Mills Co.
Augusta, Ga, ....Feby 26th 1863.
Major W. S. Downer.
Richmond Va
Dr Sir. Your
favor of 20th at hand, enclosing
Check for $915 —, & same is placed
to your Cr in full, for Invoice of paper
shipped you Oct 23d. I have been going
to call your attention several times to
the non-receipt of your letter, but absence
from home & press of other business has
prevented. I had presumed your letter
had been mis-sent, & would finally reach
me through the dead letter office
Yours Truly
Wm K Huse
Agent
Checks: one figure only, the check for $915, not extended or footed — no multiplication to prove on the face of the letter. It agrees to the cent with the sum in the docket at image 33 and with the specimen account total cited from image 6 (3,050 lb at 30 cents = $915.00).
Flagged: (1) Date conflict with the docket at image 33. The docket is dated "Feby 24. 1863" and this letter "Feby 26th 1863", yet they agree in every other particular — same firm, same place, same writer, same $915, same missent letter, same paper. The docket digit is a two-stroke period 4, not a 6 (a 6 elsewhere on both sheets is a closed loop), and the letter's 26 carries a clear looped 6 with a superscript "th". Recorded as they stand, two days apart. Possible explanations — a slip of the docketing clerk, or a separate Huse letter of the 24th now lost — are proposals only and should not be printed as fact. (2) The date of the shipment, "Oct 23d", sits under a heavy ink blot; the "d" suffix restricts the day to one ending in 3 (or 2, written 22d), and 23d is the best reading. Flagged as blotted. (3) The line "to call your attention" opens with a thick blotted deletion; the surviving word is "to", apparently written over the blot. (4) "mis-sent" is hyphenated here, where the docket at image 33 wrote "missent" as one word; both kept as written. (5) The firm is printed Bath Paper Mills Co. — engraved, not written, so this is the strongest possible evidence against "Batch". The Augusta office is styled the Agency; the mill itself is not located on this sheet. (6) Downer is addressed as Major W. S. Downer, Richmond, Va., with no department or bureau given.
Image 35 — Working draft of an agreement dated 3 December 1862, amended at every turn from a Marietta Paper Company contract into a Bath Paper Mills Company one; first leaf, no place of execution
The first leaf of the contract whose later leaves are images 31 and 32 — the same blue-ruled paper, the same fine copperplate hand, the same iron-gall ink — but here the fair text has been worked over heavily by a second reader. Names, places, quantities and dimensions are altered by interlineation above almost every line; some corrections are in the same black ink as the text, others in a much lighter grey (pencil, or a very dry pen) that films faintly and is hard to read at all. A few passages are killed outright with a heavy scribbled bar. In the left margin, a large curly brace embraces the four lines describing the first grade of paper, with the ordinals 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th written down inside it. Across the top left corner sits the postwar oval handstamp, RECORD DIVISION over REBEL ARCHIVES over WAR DEPARTMENT., in pale purple, partly running off the sheet's edge. A vertical fold shows faintly down the centre. The sheet is filled to the last line and the text runs on to the next leaf.
Note on notation below: ⟦…⟧ marks matter cancelled by a heavy stroke; ⌈…⌉ marks matter interlined above the line. This clerk habitually finishes many words with a long horizontal bar above them (the, first, part, twenty, nineteen, forty); those bars are a flourish, not deletions, and are not marked here.
[oval handstamp, upper left:] RECORD DIVISION
* REBEL ARCHIVES *
WAR DEPARTMENT.
This Agreement made and entered into this
third day of December, 1862, by and between
⌈Wm K. Huse⌉ ⌈of Augusta Ga.⌉ ⌈Bath⌉
H. S. Edmonston ⟦of Marietta – Ga.)⟧ ~ Agent (⟦Superintendent ?⟧) of the Marietta
⌈Paper Mills Company⌉
Paper Company, party of the first part, and
J. W. Mallet, Captain P. A. C. S. — Superintendent of
Confederate States Laboratories — as Agent
for the Government of the Confederate States,
party of the second part, Witnesseth,
1st — That the said party of the first part
hereby agrees and binds himself to supply
for the Service of the Ordnance Bureau
⌈following)⌉
of the Confederate States the ( ⟦[illegible — heavily struck]⟧
⌈and Kinds)⌉
quantities (of paper ⟦set forth in the⟧
⟦following lists⟧ to wit.
⌈(3) Fifteen hundred ⟦——⟧ (1500) Reams of )⌉
⌈⟦(1) Four hundred (400)⟧⌉
1st ⟦[illegible — heavily struck]⟧ A ) ( a ⌈thin⌉ strong, smooth, and uniform
⌈c.f sixteen and a half (16½) (25) ).⌉
2d paper, in Sheets twenty=four inches
⌈thirteen (13)⌉
3d long and nineteen (19) inches wide, and
⌈six (6).⌉
4th weighing forty=five (45) pounds to the Ream.
⌈⟦(2) Two thousand (2000)⌉ (400)⌉ ⌈fine)⌉
⟦2d⟧ B. (5) Four hundred (Reams of a stout and
⌈twenty=nine (29)⌉
uniform paper, in Sheets twenty=two (22)
Checks: no money on this leaf and no extensions — nothing to prove by multiplication. The figures here are quantities and sheet dimensions, and they are in flux: the first grade stands at 1500 reams in ink over an apparently cancelled 400; the second grade at 400 reams over an apparently cancelled 2000. Sheet sizes carry rival readings — 24 in. against an interlined 16½ and then 25; 19 in. wide against an interlined 13; 45 lb per ream against an interlined 6; 22 in. against an interlined 29. None of these can be footed against anything on the sheet.
Flagged: (1) This is a Marietta contract being converted into a Bath contract. The fair text names H. S. Edmonston of Marietta, Ga., Agent of the Marietta Paper Company; the amendments substitute Wm. K. Huse of Augusta, Ga., and write "Bath" above "Marietta" and "Paper Mills Company" below "Paper Company". Neither "Edmonston" nor "Marietta" is struck out — the substitutions are made by interlineation only, so both firms stand on the face of the sheet. That matters for anyone citing this document: as it survives it is a draft, not an executed instrument, and it should never be quoted as though the Marietta names had been cancelled. (2) The dimension and quantity amendments are in at least two inks or media, one much lighter than the other, and at this scan resolution I cannot reliably tell which of the lighter interlineations are themselves cancelled and which merely underscored by the flourish bar of the word beneath. They are set down above without a cancellation mark; do not read the absence of ⟦…⟧ around them as proof they stand. (3) Two passages are killed beyond recovery — one word or short phrase after "the (" in the Ordnance Bureau clause, and a longer run at the head of the "A" paragraph. Both are marked [illegible — heavily struck]. (4) The parenthetical numbers (1), (2), (3), (5) beside the quantity amendments appear to be an ordering scheme for the paragraphs rather than part of the text; recorded as written, without interpretation. (5) "c.f" before the 16½ interlineation is read letter by letter and its sense is not clear. (6) No place of execution appears on this leaf — only the date, 3 December 1862. Neither Bath, S.C., nor Augusta, Ga., is given as the place where the agreement was made. (7) Mallet's rank and office here — "Captain P. A. C. S. — Superintendent of Confederate States Laboratories" — match the signature on image 32 and confirm the two leaves belong to one instrument. (8) The firm is again written Bath, not Batch.
Image 36 — Same draft agreement of 3 December 1862, continued: two pages photographed in one frame — (a) grades B–E and place of manufacture, (b) cutting, packing, delivery at the railroad station, inspection and samples
One frame holding two pages, not two documents: an opened bifolium of the same draft as image 35, the same blue-ruled leaves, the same copperplate hand in black iron-gall ink, worked over by the same reviser. The gutter runs vertically down the centre of the frame with a dark shadow in it, and the outer edges of both leaves fall away into the black of the film. The revision is again in two media — corrections in the same black ink as the text, and a great many more in a pale grey pencil that films very faintly and is at the limit of legibility. Heavy scribbled bars kill several words outright. Faint pale-grey boxed figures reading "13" appear twice, once at the head of the right-hand page and once low on the left-hand page; they are on the film rather than in the writer's hand. Both pages are written to the last ruled line, and the right-hand page breaks off mid-clause, running on to the leaf that survives as image 31.
Notation as before: ⟦…⟧ cancelled by a stroke; ⌈…⌉ interlined above the line; (pencil) marks the pale grey corrections. The clerk's habitual horizontal flourish bar over words is not marked.
(a) Left-hand page
⌈nineteen and five=eighths (19⅝) (pencil)⌉ ⌈(18).⌉
inches long and eighteen inches wide, and
⌈thirteen (13) (pencil)⌉
weighing fifteen (15) pounds to the Ream —
⌈(4) Eight thousand (8000) (pencil)⌉ ⌈(400)⌉
⟦3d⟧ C ) (4) Four hundred (Reams of a strong
⌈with)⌉
& (slightly rough Surface, in Sheets
⌈sixteen and a half (16½). (pencil)⌉ ⌈thirteen (13) (pencil)⌉
twenty=eight (28) inches long and nineteen
⌈fourteen (14) (pencil)⌉
(19) inches wide, and weighing Sixty=five
(65) pounds, to the Ream —
⌈(6)⌉ ⌈Four thousand (4000) (pencil)⌉
⟦4th⟧ D ) ⟦(2)⟧ Twelve hundred (1200) reams of a
⌈(with rather rough surface)⌉
strong, moderately thick, and uniform paper
⌈twenty (20) (pencil)⌉
in Sheets twenty=four (24) inches long and
⌈eighteen (18) (pencil)⌉
twenty=three and a half (23½) inches wide
⌈eighteen (18) (pencil)⌉
and weighing fifty=five (55) pounds to the
Ream.
⌈(7). Two thousand (2000) (pencil)⌉
⟦5th⟧ E ) ⟦(6)⟧ Five hundred (500) reams of a ⟦heavy⟧
heavy, strong paper, with rough Surface,
⌈thirty=six (36) (pencil)⌉
in Sheets twenty=three (23) inches long
⌈twenty=four (24) (pencil)⌉
and nineteen (19) inches wide, and
⌈forty (40) (pencil)⌉
weighing seventy=five (75) pounds to the
Ream —
⌈all the)⌉
The ( ⟦above named⟧ paper above described
to be manufactured at the Mills of the
⌈Bath. Paper Mills Company – Augusta – Ga. (pencil)⌉
Marietta Paper Company, of the best mate[rial]
(b) Right-hand page
⌈respective⌉
procurable, to be cut into Sheets of the
⟦required dimensions[?]⟧ (Sizes above=named ⟦&c⟧
(said Sheets not to be folded) ⟦&c⟧, and to
⌈at the C. S. Arsenal – Augusta, Ga) (pencil)⌉
be delivered upon the cars at the Rail Road
⌈Augusta (pencil)⌉ ⌈as may be required by the said party of the second part (pencil)⌉
Station of Marietta – Ga –, in good order and
⌈Securely⌉ ⌈⟦[illegible — struck]⟧⌉
condition and ( packed in ⟦[illegible — struck]⟧ well
made boxes of moderate size — The said
paper to be delivered as Speedily as
possible, ⟦and⟧ not less than one=sixth (1/6)
⌈quantity ordered)⌉
of the entire ⟦[illegible — struck]⟧ (of each kind of
⌈⟦commencing⟧ deliveries to commence by Jany 1st 1863 (pencil)⌉
paper to be delivered per month, —
Said paper to be subject to the
inspection and approval of the said
party of the second part, and
⌈at any stage of the manufacture)⌉
such possible changes ( to be made in
the character of each kind of paper
as may be required by said party
of the second part. Samples of
the first portion of each kind of
⌈to be sent)⌉
paper ( as soon as manufactured to the
said party of the second part —
2nd. For all the paper delivered)
Checks: no money and no extensions on either page — nothing to prove by multiplication. What can be checked is continuity, and it holds: the right-hand page breaks off at "2nd. For all the paper delivered", and the leaf filmed as image 31 opens at exactly that point, carrying the interlineation "to be sent" down into its fair text. That establishes that images 35–36 are the working draft and images 31–32 the fair copy of one and the same agreement. Quantities across the two drafts do not agree, and are not meant to: the pencil hand proposes 8,000, 4,000 and 2,000 reams against the ink text's 400, 1,200 and 500.
Flagged: (1) The conversion from Marietta to Bath continues here and is again made by interlineation without cancelling the old name. The place of manufacture reads "the Mills of the Marietta Paper Company" with "Bath. Paper Mills Company – Augusta – Ga." pencilled above; the delivery point reads "the Rail Road Station of Marietta – Ga –" with "Augusta" pencilled above and "at the C. S. Arsenal – Augusta, Ga)" pencilled in the line before. Both readings stand on the sheet. (2) Note the pencil places the Bath Paper Mills Company at Augusta, Ga., not at Bath, S.C. Whether the reviser meant the mill or the agency is not stated; recorded as written and not resolved here. (3) The pencil interlineations are at the edge of legibility on this scan. Where I could not read a word I have marked it; where I have read one I am confident of the letters, but the ⌈…⌉ placement above a line is my inference from position on the page, and a fresh high-resolution scan would settle several of them. (4) I cannot reliably determine which pencil corrections were themselves later cancelled — in this hand a flourish bar over the word below sits at almost exactly the height a cancelling stroke would. None are marked as struck; do not treat that as proof they stand. (5) The bracketed ordinals ⟦3d⟧ ⟦4th⟧ ⟦5th⟧ before C, D and E are struck and replaced by the parenthetical scheme (4), (6), (7); these appear to be paragraph-ordering marks, not part of the text. (6) "Jany 1st 1863" in the pencilled delivery clause is the only date on the frame; the agreement's own date, 3 December 1862, is on image 35. (7) The word "heavy" is written twice at the E paragraph, once at the end of a line and once at the start of the next, the first apparently struck. (8) The two "13" boxed figures are film or viewer artefacts, not archival marks.
Image 37 — Same draft agreement, continued: the rate clause, every rate raised in pencil; docketed in the margin "W. K. Huse and H. S. Edmonston, Dec 3. 1862"
Another leaf of the same draft, blue-ruled, in the same copperplate and the same black iron-gall ink, with the same pale grey pencil revising it. The page is written full, edge to edge, with no space at head or foot. Down the left margin, turned ninety degrees so that it reads up the sheet, is a two-line docket in a heavier, blunter hand — "W. K. Huse and H. S. Edmonston" — with the date "Dec 3. 1862" beside it in the same pale pencil as the revisions. The postwar oval handstamp, RECORD DIVISION / REBEL ARCHIVES / WAR DEPARTMENT., is printed low on the left-hand third of the sheet in pale purple and shows through the writing without obscuring it; a second impression or its ghost overlaps the first. A vertical fold runs down the centre. Two of the faint boxed "13" film marks appear near the top. Every one of the five rates in the ink text has a pencil figure written above it.
Notation as before: ⌈…⌉ interlined above the line; (pencil) marks the pale grey corrections.
[left margin, reading up the sheet:]
W. K. Huse and
H. S. Edmonston
Dec 3. 1862 (pencil)
by the said party of the first part
in accordance with the above Specified
conditions, the said party of the second
part hereby agrees and binds himself
on behalf of the Confederate States to
pay at the following rates, to wit,
⌈fifty (50) (pencil)⌉
For the first=named paper, distinguished
by the letter A, at the rate of twenty (20) cents
per pound — For the second=named paper,
distinguished by the letter B, at the rate
⌈fifty (50). (pencil)⌉
of twenty=five (25) cents per pound — For
the third=named paper, distinguished by
⌈thirty (30) (pencil)⌉
the letter C, at the rate of twenty=five (25)
cents per pound — For the fourth=named
paper, distinguished by the letter D, at the
⌈thirty (30) (pencil)⌉
rate of twenty (20) cents per pound — And
for the fifth=named paper, distinguished
⌈thirty (30) (pencil)⌉
by the letter E, at the rate of twelve
and a half (12½) cents per pound —
Not less than ten thousand (10,000) pounds
of paper to be paid for at any one time
and twenty (20) per cent upon the value
of all the paper delivered to be retained
until the fulfilment of the contract — Pay=
ments to be made, one half in Confederate
States' Treasury Notes, and one half in
seven per cent C. S. Bonds —
Checks: no extensions and no footing — the rates are unpriced against any quantity here, so there is no multiplication to prove. The useful test is the rate table against the fair copy at image 31, and it is decisive:
draft, ink draft, pencil fair copy (image 31) paper A 20 cents fifty (50) fifty (60) paper B 25 cents fifty (50) fifty (50) paper C 25 cents thirty (30) thirty (30) paper D 20 cents thirty (30) thirty (30) paper E 12½ cents thirty (30) thirty (30)
Four of the five pencil rates are carried into the fair copy word for word and figure for figure. The payment clause matches too: ten thousand pounds minimum, twenty per cent retained, half in Treasury notes and half in seven per cent bonds, exactly as on images 31–32.
Flagged: (1) This resolves the "fifty (60)" oddity at image 31. The pencil amendment here reads fifty (50) for paper A, and every other pencil rate on this leaf is reproduced exactly in the fair copy. That makes it far more likely that the engrossing clerk's "(60)" at image 31 is a slip of the pen for (50) than that a rate of 60 cents was ever intended. This is offered as a proposal from the documents themselves; the "(60)" stands as written in the transcription of image 31 and must not be silently corrected in print. (2) The margin docket gives "W. K. Huse" — with plain W. K., not the "Wm K." of the letterhead letter at image 34 and the interlineation at image 35 — and pairs him with "H. S. Edmonston", the Marietta man whose name the draft was busy replacing. Whoever docketed the packet treated both men as parties to it. (3) The docket date, Dec 3. 1862, agrees with the date in the body of the draft at image 35 (the third day of December, 1862), so this docket does belong with the sheets it is filmed among — unlike the docket at image 33, which sits two days off its letter. (4) The docket is in pencil for the date and ink for the names, and the pencil matches the revising pencil throughout images 35–37; that suggests the reviser and the docketer are the same hand, but the sample is too short to say so with confidence. (5) No place is named on this leaf.
Image 38 — Docket on the back of the folded account: "No 31. Bath Paper Mills Co, April 5. 1862, $148.40"
The blank outer face of the folded account that is filmed open at image 39. The sheet is filmed in landscape, folded in three vertically and once horizontally, and the fold panels stand out as pale ridges; a long diagonal crease runs across the lower half and catches the light as a white line. The paper is thin and laid, and the account on the other side shows through everywhere in mirror image — column rules, the money columns, and the word BUNDLES all legible backwards through the sheet, which is why the frame looks crowded although only four short lines are actually written on this face. Those four lines sit in the centre panel in a neat, upright clerical hand in black ink, each underscored with a ruled line, and the whole block is enclosed above and below by double ruled lines drawn across the panel. Low on the centre panel is the postwar oval handstamp in pale purple-grey — RECORD DIVISION curving over, REBEL ARCHIVES across the middle between two stars, WAR DEPARTMENT. curving under — struck squarely and quite legible. Three of the faint boxed "13" film marks show at intervals down the sheet. There is no address, no wafer, and no seal.
No 31.
————————————
Bath Paper Mills Co
————————————————————
April 5. 1862
——————————————
$148 40
,,
[oval handstamp:] RECORD DIVISION
* REBEL ARCHIVES *
WAR DEPARTMENT.
Checks: one figure, $148.40, not extended — nothing to multiply on this face. Tested against the sheet it wraps (image 39), it proves exactly: that account foots at $148.40 and is receipted at Richmond on April 5th 1862. Date, place-date, sum and firm all agree, so this docket and that account belong together — unlike the pairing at images 33–34.
Flagged: (1) The final digit of the year is written with a long swash tail and, taken alone, could be read as a 4. It is settled as 2 by the account inside, which carries the printed "186" completed in ink to 1862 in two places. Recorded as 1862 on that evidence, and the reader should know the digit itself is flourished. (2) "No 31." is the number the accounting office gave this voucher; it is written by hand at the head of the docket, not printed, so it is a genuine voucher number and not a form number. It is also, by coincidence, the same figure as this image's own frame number in the microfilm — the two have nothing to do with each other. (3) The cents are written as a superior "40" over a ditto-like double stroke, in the usual way; rendered here as a separate line. (4) The firm is written Bath, not Batch. (5) The docket names no officer and no place.
Image 39 — Account: Confederate States of America to Bath Paper Mills Co. (Augusta), Dr., 25 March 1862 — 742 lb of Manilla Rope paper at 20 cents, $148.40; receipted at Richmond 5 April 1862
The account itself, opened out and filmed in landscape: a printed ruled billhead on thin blueish laid paper, much creased from having been folded in three and once across, with the fold ridges running as pale bands through the writing. The printing is black: "Confederate States of America," in heavy blackletter across the head; a double rule under it; the year "186" and the word "REMARKS." heading the two ends of the column band; ruled money columns for dollars and cents at the right and a broad REMARKS column beyond them, all empty; and, in the lower third, the printed certificate and receipt formula in roman and small capitals with ruled blanks for the manuscript to be written into. The manuscript is in at least three hands. The billing lines and the firm's name at the head are in a round, confident commercial hand in black ink. The certificate is signed in a second hand, and the receipt written across the printed blanks in a third, finer and more sloped. At the top right corner, in a large free hand, is the number 1499. At the lower left the printed words "SIGNED DUPLICATES." stand alone. The lower right corner of the sheet is torn and the frame's black surround eats into it, but no text is lost. There is no handstamp on this face — it is on the back, image 38.
1499
Confederate States of America,
To Bath. Paper. Mills Co. (Augusta) Dr
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
1862. REMARKS.
March 25 To 8 Bundles Manilla Rope 24x36 ~ 635# @ 20¢ 127 | 00
" 1 Role " " 107 " " 20 " 21 | 40
————————
$148.40
Purchased by M. Locke
Special agent ~
I CERTIFY that the above account is correct and just, amounting to
One hundred & Forty Eight 40/100 Dollars
and that the property has been received and will be accounted for W. N. Smith M. S. K.
RECEIVED, Richmond April 5th ———— 1862, of
Smith Stanbury Capt & A^ty on ordnance duty. One hundred & forty eight
———————— Dollars Forty ———— Cents, in full of the above account.
SIGNED DUPLICATES.
Bath Paper Mills Company
by Wm K. Huse Agent
Checks: the account proves exactly.
8 Bundles Manilla Rope, 24 x 36 635 lb @ 20¢ = $127.00 as billed 127.00 ✓
1 Role Manilla Rope 107 lb @ 20¢ = $ 21.40 as billed 21.40 ✓
—————— ——————
742 lb $148.40
127.00 + 21.40 = 148.40 footed at $148.40 ✓
Weight times rate proves against each extension to the cent, and the two extensions prove against the footing. The written sum in the certificate, "One hundred & Forty Eight 40/100 Dollars", and the written sum in the receipt, "One hundred & forty eight ... Forty Cents", both agree with the figures. The docket at image 38 agrees as well.
Flagged: (1) The commodity is billed as "Manilla Rope" sized 24 x 36 and sold by the pound — that is paper, the Manila rope-stock grade, not cordage; the sheet dimensions and the pound rate settle it. Recorded exactly as written; do not silently expand it to "Manilla rope paper" in print. (2) "Role" is the clerk's spelling of roll, kept as written. (3) This is a plain Confederate States of America ... Dr. billhead with a REMARKS column, with the firm's name written in by hand — not the printed "To Bath Paper Mills Company Dr." billhead headed "Ordnance Service in all its branches" described from image 6. The two forms should not be conflated. (4) The firm's name is written "Bath. Paper. Mills Co. (Augusta)" — Bath, with the Augusta agency added in parentheses. Note again that the account is billed from Augusta but receipted at Richmond, not at Augusta as in the later accounts. (5) Three names of officers or agents appear and each has a doubtful element. "Purchased by M. Locke, Special agent" is clear. "W. N. Smith, M. S. K." — the middle initial is swallowed by the flourish into the surname; M. S. K. is the usual abbreviation for Military Store Keeper. "Smith Stanbury Capt & A^ty on ordnance duty" — the surname may carry a second s (Stansbury), and the abbreviation after "Capt &" reads as A-t-y with a superior stroke; Arty (Artillery) and Acty (Acting) are both possible and I cannot choose between them from this scan. All three are flagged rather than resolved. (6) The date on the receipt is written into a printed blank whose year reads "186" in type, completed to 2 in ink; likewise the column heading "186" completed to "1862." Both are ink over print and both give 1862. (7) The number 1499 at the head is in a different hand and ink from everything else and is presumably an accounting-office file number; it is not a voucher number and not a date. (8) "Special agent" is written with a lower-case a; kept.
Image 40 — Two documents in one frame: (a) docket, "No 41. Bath Paper Mills Compy, Octob 11th 1862, Ordnance Service in all its branches, $915.00", with a second endorsement in the middle panel; (b) the edge of the account it wraps, a printed Confederate States billhead for October 1862
A folded packet filmed face-down, so that the frame is filled with the outside of the wrapper on the left and, at the extreme right, a narrow strip of the account inside it standing proud of the fold. Two documents are present. The left two-thirds is the wrapper: thin laid paper, folded in three vertically, the fold ridges standing as pale bands, with the account inside showing through in mirror image — the printed words "Cents, in full of the above account." can be read backwards low on the sheet, and ghosts of the manuscript figures float across the upper half. The docket occupies the top of the left panel in a fluent, well-formed clerical hand in black ink, five lines each ruled under. A small ink cross or check stands to the right of the first line, and a light check-mark sits over the 9 of 915. Across the middle panel, turned ninety degrees and reading up the sheet, is a second and quite different endorsement in a finer, greyer ink, containing a struck-out surname. Low on the left panel is the postwar oval handstamp — RECORD DIVISION, REBEL ARCHIVES , WAR DEPARTMENT. — struck large and dark, the clearest impression in this whole range. In the bottom left corner, written big, is a short auditing endorsement. At the right edge of the frame the account's own head shows: printed blackletter "Confe…", a double rule, printed "186…", a rule, and the manuscript month "October"; far below, the printed "and that th…" of the certificate and the opening "Ma…" of a manuscript name. Everything past those few characters runs off the frame.
(a) The wrapper — docket and endorsements
No 41. +
————————
Bath Paper Mills Compy
————————————————————————
Octob 11th 1862
——————————————————
Ordnance Service in all
————————————————————————
its branches $ 915. 00
——————————————————————————————
[middle panel, reading up the sheet, in a second hand:]
W. K. ⟦Hughes⟧ Huse
Augusta Ga —
[low on the left panel, oval handstamp:]
RECORD DIVISION,
* REBEL ARCHIVES. *
WAR DEPARTMENT.
[bottom left corner:]
Ent^d.[?]
(b) The account inside, so far as the frame shows it
Confe[derate States of America,]
——————————————————————————————
186[2.]
——————————————————————————————
October [ … ]
[ … ]
and that th[e property has been received … ]
Ma[ … ]
Checks: the docket carries one figure, $915.00, with nothing to extend or foot, so there is no multiplication to prove on this face; and the account inside is hidden, so it cannot be proved either. What the figure does is close a circle across four frames in this range: $915.00 here, "receipt of $915" in the docket at image 33, and "Check for $915" in Huse's letter at image 34 — the same money, described three times.
Flagged: (1) The dates for this $915 do not all agree. This docket dates the account "Octob 11th 1862"; Huse's letter at image 34 says the paper was "shipped you Oct 23d". Both refer to October 1862 and to the same sum, but the days are twelve apart. An account dated the 11th and a shipment of the 23d are not necessarily in conflict — the one may be the bill and the other the despatch — but nothing on either sheet says so, and the two dates should be reported as they stand rather than reconciled. (2) The surname was first written "Hughes" and then struck out and rewritten "Huse" in the middle-panel endorsement. That is direct evidence of a clerk's confusion over this man's name, and it is worth knowing when searching indexes: a Confederate clerk who heard the name might well have filed it under Hughes. (3) That middle endorsement gives the place as Augusta, Ga. — again the agency, not the mill at Bath. (4) The subject line "Ordnance Service in all its branches" is here written by hand on the docket, not printed at the head of a billhead as it is on the form described from image 6. Do not cite this frame as an instance of that printed heading. (5) The visible strip of the account (b) shows only a printed "Confe…", "186…", the month "October", the printed "and that th…" and the first two letters of a name beginning "Ma" — which is where a "Major" would be expected on this form. Nothing more can be read; the officer is not identified on the visible surface, and the natural completion to "Major W. S. Downer" is a proposal from the rest of the file, not a reading. (6) The firm is written Bath, not Batch, and "Compy" with a superior y. (7) "No 41." is a hand-written voucher number, not a form number; the docket at image 38 in the same series is "No 31." (8) The bottom-left endorsement is short, boldly written, and abbreviated with a superior letter; "Ent^d." (Entered) is the best I can make of it and it is flagged as uncertain rather than read with confidence. (9) The small cross beside the first line and the check-mark over the 9 of 915 are auditors' ticks, made at different times from the docket itself.
Part 2 — What the file shows, and what it does not prove
The contract, and the draft behind it
The heart of this file is a contract of 17 December 1862, made at the C. S. Central Laboratory (Ordnance), Macon, Georgia, and signed by J. W. Mallet, Captain, P.A.C.S., Superintendent of Confederate States Laboratories. It survives in two manuscript copies, each of four written faces and a docket, and the film has them out of order.
It engages the mill for 18,400 reams of paper in five graded descriptions, each with its sheet size, its weight per ream and its rate:
| Reams | Sheet | lb/ream | Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 400 | 16½ × 13 in. | 6 | 50¢ a pound |
| B | 4,000 | 29 × 19⅝ in. | 13 | 50¢ |
| C | 8,000 | 16½ × 13 in. | 14 | 30¢ |
| D | 4,000 | 20 × 18 in. | 18 | 30¢ |
| E | 2,000 | 36 × 24 in., rough surface | 40 | 30¢ |
Not less than one sixth of each kind a month from 1 January 1863; nothing paid for in lots under 10,000 lb; twenty per cent retained until the contract is fulfilled; sheets not to be folded, packed in well-made boxes, subject to inspection; and payment half in Confederate Treasury notes and half in seven per cent Confederate bonds.
And the working draft survives beside it — and the draft is the find of the file. It shows the bargain being made:
- It began as a Marietta Paper Company contract. The draft was converted into a Bath one by interlineation, and the Marietta names were never struck out. H. S. Edmonston of Marietta stands in the text still. It must never be quoted as though it were drawn for Bath from the start.
- Every rate was raised in pencil before the fair copy was made. The ink draft reads 20¢, 25¢, 25¢, 20¢ and 12½¢. The pencil corrections read 50¢, 50¢, 30¢, 30¢, 30¢ — and those are the rates the fair copy adopted. On the cheapest grade the price was multiplied by two and a half in the margin of the draft.
- The quantities moved too: 400 to 1,500 reams in the ink text, with pencil proposals running to 8,000.
The arithmetic
Every priced account was checked line by line. No figure has been corrected.
- $3,257.55 — proves exactly at every step.
- $915.00 — 3,050 lb at 30¢. Proves exactly.
- $148.40 — 635 lb and 107 lb at 20¢. Proves exactly, and the sums written out in the certificate and the receipt agree.
- $103.87 — 831 lb at 12½¢ is $103.875. The clerk dropped the half cent; it stands as he wrote it.
Every docket matched its account by figure, date and place — a welcome contrast to the Ettenger file, where they rarely did.
The contract sheets carry no money at all — no extensions, no footings. For orientation only, and stated nowhere on any sheet, the five grades come to 318,400 lb, which at the contract rates would be about $106,400, of which some $21,280 would be retained. That figure is a derivation, not a reading, and the page says so.
What is doubtful, and stays doubtful
- Where the mill was. The accounts put it at Bath, in Edgefield District, South Carolina. Both copies of the contract say the paper is to be made "at the mills of the Bath Paper Mills Company Augusta Ga." Bath lies about a dozen miles from Augusta and used its post office, so a clerk writing the commercial address is the likeliest explanation — but the documents disagree with each other, and neither reading is asserted here.
- The agent's middle initial. Four sheets read Wm. K. Huse; one reads H. K. Huse; one copy of the contract gives an unmistakable R where the other gives K. On one docket a clerk wrote "Hughes", struck it, and wrote "Huse" — worth knowing before searching an index.
- "Fifty (60)." The fair copy writes the rate for grade A in words as fifty and in figures as 60. The pencil draft reads fifty (50). Almost certainly the engrossing clerk's slip — but both stand uncorrected, with the argument set out where it occurs.
- Neither copy of the contract is signed by the mill. Mallet signs; the first party's scroll seal stands empty on both. The agreement should not be described as executed by both sides on this evidence.
- The October 1862 receipt names Major W. S. Downer but he did not sign it — the "I certify" blank is empty.
- Two dates run backwards: a docket dated two days before the letter it answers, and another dating the $915 account 11 October where the letter says the paper shipped on the 23rd.
Part 3 — Proposed identifications (external knowledge; flagged, never merged)
| In the file | Proposed identification | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| J. W. Mallet, Capt. P.A.C.S., Supt. of C.S. Laboratories | John William Mallet, the chemist who ran the Confederate ordnance laboratories from Macon | High; the file states the office and the place |
| Major W. S. Downer | Superintendent of armories, addressed at the Richmond Ordnance Depot | Stated as read |
| F. C. Humphreys, M.S.K. Ordnance | Military storekeeper of ordnance, paying the 1861 account | Stated as read |
| Capt. James L. White, C.S.A. | Certified and paid the July 1862 account | Stated as read |
| Wm. K. Huse | The company's Augusta agent throughout | Stated as read; the initials vary between sheets |
| Geo. W. Winter | Signs as President of the company | Stated as read |
| H. S. Edmonston | Agent of the Marietta Paper Company, left standing in the converted draft | Stated as read |
Open questions
- Whether the mill ever made fuze paper. The agent offers to, and asks for a sample. Nothing in these forty images shows a delivery.
- Whether the December 1862 contract was ever performed. The file ends in February 1863 with a letter and a docket; no delivery under the contract appears here.
- Why the draft was a Marietta contract, and whether Marietta lost the work to Bath or the two were negotiated together.
- Where the mill actually stood — Bath, S.C., or Augusta, Ga., as the contract says.
A stray is flagged rather than absorbed: image 1 carries the name "Bates, Ezra" written upside down at its foot, from another citizen's file entirely, and should not be indexed to this firm.