Civil War cache on auction block chronicles Allegheny City veteran’s 2 tours of duty
Share this post:
Allegheny County Civil War veteran Alfred W. Kredel was granted an invalid pension of $6 per month in 1884, for wounds he received 22 years earlier during action at Gaines’ Mill in Virginia.
On Sunday, the record of that pension, other personal effects related to the Troy Hill resident’s Union service and a period wooden locker containing the items and bearing Kredel’s name will be sold at auction. The collection is forecast to fetch between $1,200 and $1,800.
That’s the estimated value of Kredel’s Civil War cache that will be offered during an 11 a.m. auction by White’s Auctions of Middleboro, Mass. Bids will be taken online, by phone or in person.
“It’s amazing,” auctioneer John White said of the lot of items. “It came down through a couple of generations of a family. One of them was an auctioneer in Pennsylvania. Later on, they moved their operation to Templeton (in Massachusetts).”
A note accompanying the collection indicates the family discovered the items in a Pittsburgh home and purchased them for their antique business.
There are several period photos, including some of Kredel in uniform, a brass buckle and spurs, an artillery cap and lieutenant’s shoulder straps. A pocket dictionary with a flyleaf notation indicates Kredel was using the reference book while serving as the acting assistant adjutant general with Battery G of Pennsylvania’s 212th Regiment, 6th Heavy Artillery.
An inscribed silver pocket watch was presented as a gift to Kredel, a first lieutenant, from fellow members of the unit.
“I think it’s going to be well-received,” White said of the collection. “It’s all been inventoried and catalogued. There’s a lot of interest in the Civil War.”
“It’s still a robust market,” said Steve Sylvia, a Civil War relic collector and dealer in Orange, Va., who publishes the bimonthly magazine North South Trader’s Civil War. “There are Civil War shows across the country several times a month, and most of them do fairly well.”
Sylvia will be overseeing a 500-table show of Civil War collectibles and antique arms Oct 30-31 at Gettysburg.
Kredel wasn’t the only officer to use a personalized locker during the Civil War.
“Lockers were used for the personal belongings of the officers when they traveled,” Sylvia said. “They would be stored in wagons or aboard trains or ships, wherever they were going, to identify which property went to which man.”
Kredel was among German-American residents of the Troy Hill section of Allegheny City, annexed to Pittsburgh in 1907 and now part of the city’s North Side.
According to military documents and information accompanying the auction items, Kredel originally joined Pennsylvania’s 38th Regiment, 9th Reserves in Pittsburgh in May 1861. He was discharged as a corporal in August of the following year because of gunshot wounds to both shoulders.
That didn’t keep him from serving again.
In August 1864, he joined the artillery unit, which helped to guard a railroad line between Alexandria and Manassas, Va., and later bolstered the defenses of the nation’s capital south of the Potomac River. Kredel was mustered out with the unit on June 13, 1865.
In civilian life, he set up shop as a druggist and apothecary, at Ohio and Chestnut streets in Allegheny City.