Marked "To Be Returned. Killed in the Battle on the Little Big Horn" - Envelope Addressed to Pvt. Hiley, a Scot Noble Fighting Under an Assumed Name

Background

Trouble and abhorring consequence, has brought many a miscreant to places unimaginable. It also goes a long way toward explaining the improbability of how a Scottish nobleman died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

In the fourth year of his enlistment, Private John S. Hiley of Company E, U.S. 7th Cavalry, was killed by means unknown, at a spot unidentified, on June 25, 1876. He was not an American citizen; he was not a soldier-of-fortune; and he was not, most definitely, John S. Hiley. That was just a pseudonym.

John Stuart Stuart-Forbes was born in Rugby, England, in 1849, the grandson of one Baronet and, in the fullness of time, the brother of another. A banking scion, he bounced from college to college until inheriting at 21 (in today’s money), a quarter of a million dollars. He promptly gambled it all away and, somehow making things still worse for himself, fled his native land, zigzagging first to San Francisco, then New Zealand, and finally New York. It was there, in January 1872, he enlisted as a private in the U.S. 7th Cavalry. In doing so, he chose a pseudonym, borrowing the surname, “Hiley,” from his clergyman brother-in-law.

Found among his effects after death was a letter from his mother which read, "You can return home now, as the trouble causing your departure has been settled." Recovered, too, was gambling paraphernalia.

Physical Description

[Little Bighorn – John S. Hiley] Envelope, to be returned to writer: recto and verso, small quarto, addressed on recto to John S. Hiley, 'E Troop' 7 Cavalry, Fort Abe Lincoln, Dakotah, United States of America" and in another hand "Bighorn Expedition," then marked "Dead" and again, in red ink, "Dead" and “over”, tied by "Margate/Jy 30, 76" duplex postmark. Verso contains holograph message stating details of Hiley’s death; replete with partial "Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dak/Oct 8" postmark and a blue triangular "Dead Letter Office/U.S.A./Oct 13, 76" handstamp.

Of exceptional rarity.