Autograph Note Signed. 1 pp. 6½x4".

To Anthony & Co. New York: “Capt. Barltett who will hand you this has charge of the Signal Tower on the Appomattox and has offered me a [?] view of the top of Tower. Any favor you can give him in the way of Pictures of that Location will be to your benefit….” Roche was a professional photographer who worked for Henry Anthony and Mathew Brady during the Civil War, travelling on the front lines with the Army of the James and risking life and limb to photograph soldiers in camp and on the battlefield. 25 year-old Captain Asa Bartlett, after fighting with his New Hampshire regiment in Virginia - once taking the American flag from the hands of a wounded color-bearer and carrying it safely from the field in a “sweeping storm of shot and shell” – was given charge of the 125-foot signals tower near the confluence of the Appomattox and James Rivers; this offered such a commanding view of Petersburg while the city was under siege by General Grant that the Confederates built a two-gun battery a mile away in the vain hope of destroying it. It was a perfect, if precarious, vantage point for a daring photographer, and Roche was eager to cultivate Bartlett’s friendship, asking a favor of his former employers while the young officer hand-carried this note to New York. Battlefield letters written by notable Union photographers are rarely seen outside of institutional collections.