Background
Absalom Carlise Grimes, son of William Leander and Charlotte (Wright) Grimes, was born on August 22, 1834 in Jefferson County, Kentucky. His father was a pilot on the upper Mississippi.
(Historical account and interesting story of a steamboat p...)
Historical account and interesting story of a steamboat pilot at the beginning of the Civil War. He became a mail smuggler at great risk to himself, and was later called the "Official Confederate Mail Carrier."
https://www.amazon.com/Absalom-Grimes-Confederate-mail-runner/dp/B00085C0B4?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00085C0B4
Absalom Carlise Grimes, son of William Leander and Charlotte (Wright) Grimes, was born on August 22, 1834 in Jefferson County, Kentucky. His father was a pilot on the upper Mississippi.
When he was sixteen, his father put an end to the boy’s career as a telegraph messenger, and took him on the Uncle Toby as an apprentice.
He was licensed a pilot in 1852, and began working the river between St. Louis and St. Paul.
In May 1861, applying for a renewal of his license, he became angered by the demand of a naturalized German official that he take an oath of allegiance to the Federal Government, and returned to his home in Hannibal.
With him, under like impetus, went his fellow townsman, Samuel L. Clemens.
Apprehended there and taken to St. Louis, they escaped and soon afterward joined a nondescript, self- equipped group of ten or twelve Confederate soldiers. Clemens, mounted on a mule named Paint Brush, was their second lieutenant when he was not more essentially occupied with his functions as Punchinello.
It was a gusty, roistering troop, sometimes attached to larger units, sometimes traveling independently, occasionally in skirmishes, but oftener at country parties more concerned with love than with war, or engaged in horse-play.
Before long, Ab was captured, but escaping, he returned to St. Louis. There, plotting with some women of his acquaintance, he conceived a plan of carrying mail to Confederate soldiers, and in April 1862, with a great batch of letters, he undertook his first run.
A few days later, he reached a Confederate camp at Rienzi, Mississippi, much to the elation of the soldiers there anxious for news from home. He returned to St. Louis, and, his women friends still aiding him, for about two years made trips back and forth, whenever he was not a prisoner.
After a few months he was made official mail-carrier and commissioned major, but he was fortunately not obliged to work in a definite military organization.
Five seperate times he was captured and confined in Northern territory but always, by disguise and subterfuge, he managed after a little to escape and reinstitute his runs.
Wounded at the time of his sixth capture in 1864, he was tried at St. Louis and sentenced to be hanged, but was temporarily spared because of feigned illness. His sentence was commuted by Lincoln, first to imprisonment for the duration of the war, and later, on condition that he take an oath of allegiance to the United States, to imprisonment till December 1, 1864. He was taken to the Jefferson City penitentiary. Toward the end of November, though the order for his release was already in the hands of the warden, he was on the instigation of that functionary so brutally beaten that he carried the fierce scars of the event with him till his death.
He again took up his work as pilot, once ascending the Missouri as far as Fort Benton, Montana, but in general keeping to the more usual destinations along the Missouri and the Mississippi above St. Louis.
In 1870 he settled down as a confectioner in Hannibal, but two years later moved to St. Louis and till 1883 worked as a pilot. For many years subsequently he managed a hunting club in Lincoln County, Missouri, then conducted a moving- picture show in St. Louis and afterwards worked for the General Compressed Air-Vacuum Cleaning Company.
In 1910-11, on the basis of a diary he had kept he wrote the reminiscences which, edited by M. M. Quaife, were published in 1926 under the title, Absalom Grimes, Confederate Mail Runner.
(Historical account and interesting story of a steamboat p...)
He had irresistible personality and romantic dare deviltry.
On March 7, 1865, after an engagement of seven years, he married Lucy Glascock of New London, Missouri, and they went on a honeymoon trip by boat to New Orleans. His wife died in 1903, and on December 15, 1905, he married his twenty-year-old ward, Nell Tauke.
