GUEST: So my family is
from Radford, Virginia,
up in the mountains.
And about 30 years ago,

when my mother was selling the
family house, all these papers
were just haphazardly thrown

in the attic, and she didn't
know what they were, so she
boxed them up and moved them

to her house, and there they
sat for another 30 years. And
till about five years ago, I

wondered what was in all those
boxes, and I started opening
them and found these letters.

APPRAISER: And they're all from
your great-grandfather or...

GUEST: Great-great-grandfather,
he was General Gabriel
Wharton from the Confederacy.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: And yeah, these are
all his personal letters
before, during, and after the

war.

APPRAISER: That's what I find
fascinating about it, because
obviously, General Wharton

was a very important Confederate
general, and you have a
tremendous amount of material

from the war. But also material
prior to and after that really
fleshes out his life. So

starting over here, we
have a fabulous letter
written to General
Wharton, obviously before

the war, by a Mr. Mason. Tell
me a little bit about the
letter from what you remember.

GUEST: So at this point, General
Wharton was a surveyor for
the railroad on the Gadsden

Purchase. And he had friends
who were throughout the west at
that point, so this friend, Mr.

Mason, was in Salt Lake
City, and he was working
for the Indian Affairs
office, and he just

writes him a letter to
tell him what's going on...

APPRAISER: With the Mormons
in Salt Lake City. With the
Mormons in the city, yeah. Yeah,

so it's a fascinating letter
from 1859, and he recounts
attending the Tabernacle Sunday

events with Brigham Young,
and it's a little bit derisive
about the beautiful girls who

make up his 64 wives.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: Now, when he
was in the Civil War, he
was involved in a number of

very important campaigns,
including the Battle for Fort
Donelson. And we picked out from

your archive just a letter,
one letter here from
General Lee, Robert E. Lee,

dated April 21, 1862. And of
course it was just after the
Battle of Fort Donelson when

Floyd and his troops had
lost the battle to General
Grant, and there was
calls for unconditional

surrender. So this
very interesting war
period letter from Lee,

instructions to gather the
troops and bring them together.
Because it's an archive that

expands beyond the war, and he
was one of the last Confederate
generals to be in operation

before the final surrender...

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: You also
have him returning after
the war to do what?

GUEST: Well, you know,
the Confederacy lost,
and so he needed to
have a job, and he went

back to his old profession of
surveying. And worked for the
land office, and was very lucky

to get the job, actually.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: So in the 1880s, he's
working for the land office
out in New Mexico and Arizona.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: And he has a narrow
escape from Geronimo.

APPRAISER: This is a letter
written to his wife, I
believe, from April 1886.

GUEST: Right. Yes, yep.

APPRAISER: And of course,
Geronimo would finally
surrender to American
troops in... later that

year, in November of 1886.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: He later acquired
this cabinet card. It's a
very famous cabinet card from

C.S. Fly, who was based
in Tombstone, Arizona.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So it's an incredibly
interesting archive. Have you
ever had the archive evaluated

or appraised or looked at?

GUEST: No.

APPRAISER: Well, I mean, it's
very, very rich, and we only
could pull out a few things. If

it were to come to auction at
a major auction house, it would
probably have an aggregate

value of $30,000 to $50,000.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness.

APPRAISER: And that might
be conservative, given the
richness of what you have.

GUEST: Thank you.

APPRAISER: Thank you, I'm
so glad you were able to
bring it in. Incredible.

GUEST: Thank you! Wow.
Who knew what was in
the attic? (chuckling)

APPRAISER: Yeah. You know?