Mark Lawson of Albany’s Mark Lawson Antiques, Jewelry, and Coin joins us to answer your questions about your treasures. Ray Graf hosts.
To join the conversation, give us a call at show time, 2pm. 1-800-348-2551. Or e-mail us at VoxPop@wamc.org.
Mark Lawson is a past member of the American Society of Appraisers and has completed courses in the NYU Appraisal Studies program in Period American Furniture at the Metropolitan Museum with David A. Gallager and Oriental Rugs with George Anavian at his shop in New York’s rug district. He is also certified in Diamond grading from the Gemological Institute of America.
Here are images of a very interesting Civil War archive that Mark is helping a family with.
The collection is comprised of the papers and documents of a Colonel Cramer Burt. Colonel Burt began his career as a member of Cassius Clay’s battalion which was organized in 1861 to protect the capital in Washington DC from the encroaching southern confederate army.
The archive includes his membership certificate in that battalion, as well as a very nice Abraham Lincoln signed paymaster commission to the United States Navy where he served aboard the Union frigate Cumberland, which was sunk in 1862 by the confederate ironclad Merrimack. Fortuitously colonel Bert had taken ill and had left the ship the day before it was rammed and sunk. The archive includes the key to the safe of the Cumberland, the wreckage of which was found at the mouth of Virginia’s St. James river in 1981.
If they find the safe and need the key, we know where it is.
