While renovating their house, a family in Michigan was surprised to discover a letter written in 1886 and addressed to a veteran of the Civil War behind a baseboard.
Erik Erhorn, the supervisor of Michigan’s Crockery Township, bought the house with his wife in 2017 and found the 135-year-old letter when he and his brother Tyler were doing work on it, according to Fox 17.
The letter was dated Aug. 3, 1886, over two decades after the Civil War, and sent to Medad Spencer, who served in the Navy during the the Civil War, by Charles V. Warren, according to the outlet. In the letter, Warren asked Spencer to consider purchasing a parcel of land from him.
“Charles V. Warren of Hart wanted Medad to sell his property down here, and buy the property up in Hart, his 160 acres,” Erhorn told Fox 17.
While doing some updating. My brother and I came across a letter written in 1886. (Apparently it has been in the wall…
Posted by Erik Erhorn on Sunday, March 7, 2021
Spencer was born in on Aug. 22, 1836 in New York and died on Oct. 25, 1919 in Crockery, according to KIRO 7.
“Things that we think of being so long ago, this letter far exceeds them,” Erhorn said of this discovery.
Erhorn and his wife purchased the house from a woman whose husband passed away, and that woman’s family purchased the property from Erhorn’s great grandfather, according to Fox 17. The family who owned the house before his great grandfather was related to the writer of the letter. (RELATED: Ancient Chariot Discovered In Pompeii Excavation)
“They bought it from my Great Grandpa who bought the farm from the Spencer family in the early 1940s,” Erhorn said to Fox 17.
While renovating, Erhorn and his family also discovered an old leather belt under some carpet, and a promotional brochure for a washboard that was state-of-the art at the time.