J S Pendergrast, Left handed writing sample submitted to penmanship competition for amputees, civil war soldiers, 1865

J S Pendergrast, Left handed writing sample submitted to penmanship competition for amputees, civil war soldiers, 1865 me in performing any kind of labor. I remained in the hospital 5 months and was discharged two days after my term of service expired. Engagements: Traitor's Creek, Rawle's Mills; Kingston, Whitehall, Goldsboro in North CArolina; Siege of Forts Wagner and Gregg in South Carolina; Drury's Bluff, Va; at Bermuda Hundred, the 16th & 17th of June 1864; where I lost my right arm by a shell. "Gentlemen, please accept my sincere thanks for the interest you take in the "crippled soldier." J. S. Pendergrast, North Truro, Mass: "late corporal of Co "F", 24th Regt Mass: Vols: Writer J S Pendergrast Handedness Left handed Date written 1865 Paper cm x cm in x in Pen black Note "William Oland Bourne, editor of the periodical The Soldier's Friend, sponsored two contests in which Union soldiers and sailors who lost their right arms by disability or amputation during the Civil War were invited to submit samples of their penmanship using their left hands. Cash prizes totaled $1000 for the first contest and $500 for the second. An exhibition of all first contest entrants was held in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 1866." [1] Private J.S. Prendergast, Company F. 24th Massachusetts Infantry, won $20 for this submission. The contest brochure revealed that Prendergast not only lost his right arm but “two fingers and part of the thumb of the left hand.” Penmanship Style Collection Library of Congress Links Library of Congress, [2] William Oland Bourne left-handed penmanship papers, 1862-1868 (bulk 1865-1868), New-York Historical Society [3] Meaningful Utility: The Handwritten Word During the American Civil War. Pt. 2 of 2., New-York Historical Society [4] U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, exhibition [5] File name Pendergrast J S 18xx-0x-0x