1862 Original Sketch with Partial ALS by Pvt. Heyward Emmel

“I undertook to draw Sister Kate a picture of Norfolk…”

Original pencil sketch of Norfolk. Norfolk, VA, [April?] 1862. With partial autograph letter signed by Heyward Emmel, to his mother. [Norfolk, VA], [1862].

Heyward G. Emmel enlisted as a private on 15 September 1861 and was mustered into Company K of the 7th New Jersey Infantry on 2 October 1861. Later he would become a stretcher bearer in the Ambulance Corps. His detailed journals were published, edited by Jim Malcom, under the title The Civil War Journal of Private Heyward Emmell, Ambulance and Infantry Corps: A Very DIsagreeable War (2011).

This sketch and partial letter home to his mother was written during April or early May 1862 when the 7th New Jersey moved into the Virginia Peninsula where they would participate in the Siege of Yorktown (April 10-May 5) and the Battle of Williamsburg (May 5). Emmel’s drawing captures the harbor as seen from the Naval Hospital. He gives detail to the buildings along the shoreline and the several masted ships and small boats on the Elizabeth River. Emmel apparently didn’t think much of his attempt, however, as he writes in the note on the drawing’s verso: “I undertook to draw Sister Kate a picture of Norfolk but did not succeed very well I will try again so I will use this paper to write on as there is no use of wasting it.”

A charming view of Norfolk at a pivotal time from a published diarist.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate, Drawings, Art, Union, Manuscripts, Ephemera]