Extraordinary donations have come through the doors at Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop – including a live horse that sold for $350.

But a stack of Civil War letters dropped off in a heap of household items topped the list for the most historically significant donation the volunteer-run shop has ever received.

And when shop volunteer Harriet Stambaugh set out to research the fair market value of the letters, she discovered the ancestors of the soldier who wrote the letters to his girlfriend in 1863.

Jody Orbits, vice president of Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop, says the shop received the 15 letters in pristine condition three years ago, but held on to them to determine a fair price. Stambaugh recently picked up the project and after reading the letters, “I decided I needed to know something about the man who wrote them,” she said.

A Google search for the author – M.F. Snavely – turned up a Web page of the soldier’s great nephew, Richard Snavely, who was searching for more information about his family. Stambaugh tried the nephew’s e-mail, which no longer existed. Then she searched the online White Pages and found the Iowa man’s phone number.

“Imagine cold calling somebody,” she said. “A kid on Christmas morning is an understatement of how excited I was that this man had answered the phone.”

Snavely said he almost fell over when he got the phone call.

“I was quite surprised and very pleased that these letters existed,” Snavely told the Reporter over the phone from his home in Iowa.

A genealogist for his family, Snavely verified some information in the letters and knew right away his uncle wrote them.

Civil War letters

On a recent afternoon, Stambaugh dons a pair of white gloves and holds up a magnifying glass to make out the small, elegant handwriting in one of the letters.

“With pleasure, I try to write a few lines and answer to your kind favor, which I received on last evening,” she reads. “It found me in the enjoyment of reasonable good health.”

Due to the emphatic flourishing in the handwritten letters, many of them are difficult to read all the way through, Stambaugh said. She goes through snippets of the letters, wherein M.F. Snavely described to a woman named Mary Molly Zeller what life was like as an Army private during the Civil War.

“He’s in a hospital, probably with chronic dysentery, which was prevalent at that time,” she said of a letter written from a hospital in Illinois. The soldier also said he has chronic diarrhea, a bad cough and is not able to travel with the troops because of his poor health. He later traveled by train and steamer to meet up with the rest of his unit.

“He talks about ‘Negro troops’ that he saw on the road, I thought that was interesting,” said Stambaugh. “This was also interesting, I had never heard of the word ‘copperheads’ and found it was anti-war northern Democrats.”

The soldier also notes that about 125,000 men deserted the Army.

Orbits pointed out why the letters and envelopes were so small because “they had to fit in these saddle bags for Pony Express.”

Stambaugh says she thinks it’s “fabulous” that she was able to find the late soldier’s nephew and “It’s just been a blast talking to him. I’d love to meet him.”

She has since mailed the letters to Richard Snavely, who gave Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop a donation in return.

So far, Snavely, a retired prison psychologist, has read through three of the letters.

“He (his uncle) may have been embellishing this to impress her (Zeller),” he laughs, “But he said their instructions were to say ‘halt’ three times when somebody was approaching them and then fire. But he said my plan is to fire three times and then halt.”

Snavely would now like to find out who the woman is that his uncle addressed the letters to.

“These are obviously what you would call love letters,” said Snavely. “He did not end up marrying her, so you kind of wonder if she ever married because she kept the letters.”

Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop is located at 12451 116th Ave. N.E. For information, call 425-825-1877.