Outbound blockade-run cover Per 'Wild Pigeon’ sender's ship-name endorsement on cover to Mrs. Caroline Carson, [in care of] E. E. Detmold Esq., 40 Trinity Building, New York. Rate "5" in circle handstamp, pencil docketing "Feb. 1st 1863" gives origin date, slight toning and minor edge faults. EXTREMELY RARE EXAMPLE OF A SHIP-NAME ENDORSEMENT ON OUTBOUND BLOCKADE-RUNNING MAIL. This cover had to have arrived after April 1, 1863, based on the use of the "5" in circle due marking for British Packet mail. Ship-name endorsements on outgoing mail are very rare. The Wild Pigeon is not recorded anywhere as a blockade-running steamer. There was a schooner Wild Pigeon that was rammed and sunk on a blockade-running trip between Havana and Florida on March 21, 1864, by the USS Hendrick Hudson (formerly the famed Confederate blockade-runner Florida). Illustrated in the Confederate Philatelist (Jul-Aug. 1989, No. 250). Ex Everett, J.V. Nielsen, Myerson and Walske. $2,000.

Jane Caroline Petigru Carson (1820-1892) was the widow of William Augustus Carson (1800-1856), a citizen of South Carolina and owner of Dean Hall (a plantation). In ill health, and a committed Unionist, Mrs. Carson left South Carolina in 1861 and went to New York to live. Caroline was the eldest daughter and second child of James Petigru who lost a great deal of money in the Panic of 1837, forcing him to sell his land holdings, his rice plantation and most of his 137 slaves. Because of these losses, her mother, Jane Amelia Postell Carson, pushed her daughters to marry for wealth. Carolina married Carson, a man twice her age.