Hey everybody, welcome to Retell Seller, an ephemera podcast where I uncover forgotten stories and the ephemera people leave behind. I’m Angie, a reseller of 10 years, and I’ll share one of those snippets with you. Let’s see what today’s find has to say
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I’m reading from a letter which came out of the hatbox I’d purchased some months back. It’s where I pulled the state’s attorney mending kit from, which I spoke of a few episodes ago. While it was full of all kinds of different pieces ephemera, it was mainly filled with letters between a couple during World War II.
This letter, however, predates those by almost 50 years, plus the name of the sender as well as the recipient of the letter don’t seem to match any of the others from the box, so I don’t know how this person fits in with everyone, if at all, and we’re definitely not going into that one today. But what I do have is a letter still in its envelope.
The envelope’s front upper left side has a blue printed image of a ship, and it says USS Iowa. It’s postmarked December 4th, 1899, out of San Francisco. It’s addressed to a Lizzie Saal from Peoria, Illinois.
The envelope was torn along the right side in order to remove the letter. It’s all very yellowed, creased, and stained. The back has another postmark of December 8th, 1899, being received in Peoria. It also has an oval stamp saying, “Received 2,” the number two. The flap was written on as well, and it reads, “If not delivered in ten days, Return to E.N. Zentgraph, USS Iowa, San Francisco, Cal.” And between the two postmark dates stamped, we do know it only took four days to arrive.
Being that the paper written on was landscape, the writer folded it in half like a card and a couple more times to fit in the little 6 by 3.5” envelope. It’s written on a yellow piece of 9 by 7” faintly lined paper. You can barely see it. It’s like manuscript paper when we were little.
The first page in the upper right says, “USS Iowa, San Francisco, Cal, December 4th, 1899.
My dear aunt, I thought I’d write a few lines to you letting you know that I am still in good health.
I received a letter from my sister Nellie, and she told me that Mrs. Hall had died on the 23rd of September, her maiden name being Lizzie Bartel.
I think we are to leave here in about a week to have target practice, but we will return in about a month’s time for stores. My sister Minnie left home some time ago, and it is believed at home that she is married. I think Nellie is engaged to be married again.
Nellie is a widow almost four years. Well, Aunt Lizzie, I’ve send you a letter and my photograph a few months ago and received no answer. Let me know if you received them. I hope that you are not sick. When you write to me, please let me know if my grandfather is still living and if I have any cousins, aunts, or uncles in Peoria.
I heard my mother say when I was a little boy, that I had an aunt and grandfather in Illinois. So I happened to think of it one day and thought I’d write home and ask Nellie for the address, and that is how I come to write you. Mother and all at home are well, and I hope that you are the same.
I’ll close my short letter hoping to hear from you soon. With love and fond wishes to all, I remain your loving nephew, Ernest Klotz.
Please excuse penmanship and grammar.”
First off, the penmanship is lovely, and I certainly can’t care about grammar at this point.
So I searched for all the names from the envelope and didn’t have any luck really, at least not anything I could tie together and confirm, not Ernest or his sisters, not the return name of Zentgraph. I did even look up Mrs. Hall, who he had mentioned had died, and I didn’t find anything
Lizzie was the only one who, while I still can’t confirm, I do think is the correct person. The only thing is the articles state she lives in Pekin, Illinois, which is a neighboring city to Peoria. And given that the articles I found mentioning her were written in 1903 and 1905, at least four years after the letter’s date, I’m fairly confident it’s her, and maybe she had just moved.
But one of the articles reads in part, “Miss Lizzie Saal of Pekin was entertained at a party last evening in the home of Mrs. David Abbott of West Morrell Street, and she said she had a large time.” That’s it. Is that the equivalent of having a grand time or just an eventful time?
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The other snippet is out of Eureka, Illinois, and says, “Miss Lizzie Saal, who has been visiting this city, returned to Pekin Friday evening.” That one certainly doesn’t seem as eventful as her party
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Uh, no offense to Lizzie, and I’m not saying she’s boring by any means, but I couldn’t wait to look up information on the battleship Iowa to connect it, if possible, to Ernest’s letter. I started with just searching for the USS Iowa, and Wikipedia showed up as USS Iowa BB-61.
And not being familiar with battleships, I start reading and notice it wasn’t talking about anything from the late 1800s or even the early 1900s. So I tacked on late 1800s to my search, which then brought up the USS Iowa BB-4.
It was built in 1896 and entered into service in 1897, only two years before Ernest wrote his letter. The Iowa took part in the Spanish-American War in 1898, and when the war was over, they focused on training exercises with the Pacific Squadron until 1902.
Just as Ernest stated in his letter dated December 4th when he said, I think we are to leave here in about a week to have target practice,” Wikipedia confirms it, saying the USS Iowa took part in training exercises off San Diego, California beginning December 20th, 1899.
And on the first day of exercises, the Iowa lost one of her Howell torpedoes after the practice warhead likely detached after it was launched. Years later, in March 2012, a couple of dolphins, part of the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program, recovered a torpedo which was later transferred to the Naval History and Heritage Command Underwater Archaeology Branch for preservation.
I went to the NHHC’s website and found the article about it titled “Torpedo Shot From USS Iowa in 1899 Surfaces.” When it was first found, it wasn’t known which battleship it came from, so now they had to figure out which one it belonged to. Mikala Pyrch, a George Washington University intern at the time, said they, quote,
“Started looking through Secretary of the Navy reports and narrowed it down to eight ships which had been outfitted with Howell torpedoes. From there, we figured which ships had gone through the Pacific Fleet or spent any time in California along the coast. That narrowed it down to the USS Marblehead and the USS Iowa. we went to the National Archives and looked in the deck logs. I saw that in December of 1899, Iowa had been doing target practice with the torpedoes and had lost Howell number 24.”
She went on to say, “I never expected to become a private investigator. I didn’t ever think that we would find conclusive evidence. I thought we would have a best guess. To see Howell 24 lost on this day at this time, it was pretty exciting.”
The USS Iowa was decommissioned in 1908 and recommissioned in 1910 after being modernized, becoming a training ship for cadets. It was decommissioned again in 1914 and reactivated again in 1917 entering World War I.
The USS Iowa’s service came to an end in 1923 when it became a target ship for training. Wikipedia has a page about target ships alone, and it said, quote, “The US Navy and Army did live fire testing of attacking warships from the air. To get the testing as close to wartime conditions as possible, a well-known radio engineer, John Hays Hammond Jr., developed the radio control gear to convert USS Iowa BB-4 into a remote-controlled target ship, a US Naval first. She was sunk off the Pacific coast of Panama during fleet exercises by the battleship Mississippi, with members of the United States Congress and the press attending.”
Similar to what Michaela had said earlier, many times as I’m trying to connect things, I get to the point where I think, Oh, no, I’m in way over my head, or, I’m not gonna find anything out on this that I can connect back.
I too thought this may be a “best guess” type scenario. Never would I have imagined, the dates would match perfectly and what Ernest stated in his letter would match historical documentation. This is why I’m doing this podcast. Who knows what would have happened to this letter if I hadn’t purchased a hat box full of ephemera.
There were multiple different photos I came across of various Navy men on the USS Iowa, in the late 1800s, and I couldn’t help but wonder if any of those men was Ernest Klotz. Wouldn’t that be something?
If you’d like to see the letter, the envelope, and the links where I found all of this information, be sure to visit retellseller.com. That’s R-E-T-E-L-L seller.com or visit the YouTube channel where I create videos to go alongside
Thank you for joining me as I shared a snippet of the past. I’d love to know if it connected with you in some way. Did it spark a memory or make you see something differently? If so, consider sharing it. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional info, links, and ways to connect. It’s not nostalgia, it’s human.
Until next time, may you find something worth holding onto
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ADDITIONAL LINKS & INFO
- Grout Museum – Waterloo, IA
- Grout Museum – YT Video on USS Iowa
pinny please
