General R. E. Lee and Traveler
Sometimes I find an article of such odd interest that I want to do more research into that article. But, with limited time, I’ll put this one out there to allow you or others to discover more about this piece. The story involves Texas artist Percy Holt and five hairs from General Robert E. Lee’s horse, Traveler.
It was on this day in 1983 that the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, Texas announced its new exhibit drawn from the “treasure trunks of its own attic.”
Library curator Lise Darst noted, “Attics have a way of collecting objects no longer of interest to one generation and which are rediscovered with excitement by the next.
The exhibit, entitled “From Our Attic,” brought together dozens of items from Galveston’s past for a year-long showing in that library’s third-floor Hutchings Gallery. One of the items was five horse hairs clipped from the tail of “Traveler,” Robert E. Lee’s horse, when the surrender papers were signed in Appomattox on 9 April 1865.
The memento was a gift from Percy Holt, a Galveston painter, in 1919.
Holt lived from 1881 to 1958, so he wasn’t alive during the surrender at Appomattox. But, there is a possibility that one of Holt’s ancestors was present at the surrender. Then the question – how did one soldier get away with clipping some hairs from Traveler’s tail? Why wasn’t Traveler totally stripped by souvenir collectors?
Finally, the thought occurs to me that these hairs, along with other items in that display, may have been lost in Hurricane Ike during 2008. Frankly, I wondered how those hairs made it through the 1900 Galveston hurricane, if Holt and his family lived there during that time.
These questions and more…maybe I’ll answer them by this time next year.
“Library’s attic treasure trove of memorabilia,” Galveston Daily News, 27 February 1983, pg. 206.
