Stampless Covers - Virginia and West Virginia - Section Two - Item#11272
11272 Click on image to enlarge.
Item# 11272

COBHAM / Va. // Sep 30 [1861] cds with date in manuscript on stampless cover with matching PAID 5 (rate in ms), CC type A, addressed to Capt. Alfred I. Rives, Care of J. B. Macnudo, Richmond, Va. with pencil docketing “Papa 30th September 1861.” Correspondence between mover and shaker father and son. $200.

Alfred Landon Rives was born in 1830 in Paris, France, the son of William Cabell Rives, the distinguished minister to France. During the War, he was acting chief engineer for the State of Virginia and later for the Confederate States, which position he held until the end of the War as a Colonel. He was one of the two Chiefs of the Corps of Engineers to General Robert E. Lee.

William Cabell Rives (1793 - 1868) was a U.S. Representative and a Senator from Virginia almost continuously from 1832 until the War; attended Hampden-Sidney College and graduated from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. in 1809; studied law; admitted to the bar about 1814 and commenced practice in Charlottesville, Albemarle County; moved to “Castle Hill,” Albemarle County in 1821 where he is buried; Minister to France 1829-1832 and again 1849-53; delegate in 1861 from Virginia to the Confederate Provisional Congress in Montgomery, Ala., and Richmond, Va., member of the house of representatives from Virginia in the Second Confederate Congress.

Price: $250