CHINA 福州 Fuzhou Foochow Letter from US Consul to Civil War Comrade 1892 Gracey

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CHINA 福州 Fuzhou Foochow Letter from US Consul to Civil War Comrade 1892 Gracey:
$232.50

CHINA 福州 Fuzhou Foochow Letter from US Consul to Civil War Comrade 1892 GraceyChaplain & Unit Historian 6th Pennsylvania CavalryServed 13 Years in China, Slit His Own Throat with a Straight Razor in a Mental Hospital Letter typed on stationery of the Consulate of the United States of America, Foochow, China, dated November 12, 1892, and signed by S.L. Gracey, Consul, 21 x 27 cm, (8.5 x 10.5 in). Folded, with closed tear on one edge.
The letter is from Samuel Levis Gracey (1835-1911) to his comrade in the US Civil War, Benoni Lockwood (1834-1909). A native of Philadelphia, Gracey was educated at Boston University and was ordained a Methodist minister in 1857. During the Civil War he served as chaplain of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry (Rush\'s Lancers), except for a brief stint as chaplain at a federal prison camp for Confederate soldiers at Rock Island, Illinois. In 1868 he published a history of his unit, Annals of the Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry. Lockwood, the recipient of this letter, served in the 6th from 1861 to 1864, achieving the rank of major.
After the war, Gracey served as pastor of several different Methodist churches in Massachusetts until he was appointed US consul in Fuzhou (福州, Foochow) by Benjamin Harrison in 1890. When Democrat Grover Cleveland returned to office in 1893, it was back to Massachusetts for Gracey, but when the Republicans regained the White House in 1897, McKinley reappointed Gracey to Fuzhou, where he remained until 1907. His 13 year tenure as a US consul in China is one of the longest on record.
In 1911 Gracey returned to China to visit his son Wilbur, then consul at Nanjing. They traveled back to the States together, with the elder Gracey in frail mental condition. According to an article in the Hawaiian Star as they passed through Honolulu in July, he was suffering shock from the wreck of the SS Asia on the south China coast in April. He checked into a mental hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, and on August 19 he slit his own throat with a razor when his attendant stepped out of the room.
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