Letterhead top - Axel Silversparre

I purchased this letterhead top along with 4 others on ebay this past March. I was drawn to the image of the men surveying. The billhead is dated 188_ and states: Axel Silversparre civil and topographical engineer Washington D.C.

Axel Silversparre was born in 1834 at Strangas Sweden. He came to America. In January and February 1862 he recruited Battery H out of Chicago. His command was know as “Silversparre’s Battery.”

In March the battery was ordered to St. Louis where it was equipped with as a four 20 pound gun battery. In the spring of 1862, after it was immediately reassigned to Grant’s Department of Cairo which was building up for campaigns on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Silversparre’s Battery took part in the Battle of Shiloh forming the center of the line of artillery and repulsed the last charges of the Confederates. Soon after the battery became part of General Sherman’s command attached to the 2nd Division of the XV Corps where it remained for the rest of the war. In the summer of 1862, Silversparre was made Chief of Artillery at Fort Pickering during the Memphis Campaign but was captured during one of the battles for Memphis and never rejoined his battery.

After the war he was connected with the Quincy mines in Michigan. In 1880 we find him in Colorado employed as an engineer in the Rio Grande office. After that he ends up in Washington D.C. where he produced a map of that city. He is credited with creating the first map of the state. He died in May 1906.

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