This article is from the October - December 2009 issue of the Confederate Philatelist. Posted under a prior agreement with the then journal editors in effect since the early days of this website.
The United States census for 1860 identifies Louis E. Pradat as a forty two year old white male resident in Pass Christian, Harrison County, Mississippi. A native of Louisiana, he appears in only the 1860 census as a resident of Harrison County along with his wife, C. A., and seven children ranging in age from 4 to 17 years. In either 1861 or 1862, Pradat issued paper scrip in ten, twenty-five, fifty cent, and one dollar denominations. Identical in design except for the denomination, each note bears a figure of Justice on the left side, a steamer and clipper (perpendicular) on the right, with an eleven star Confederate flag in the center. Issued to ease the shortage of specie, Pradat numbered and hand signed with red ink some of the notes which were redeemable at his store in Pass Christian. Reflecting the shortage of paper and suggesting therefore an 1862 issue, each note is printed on the back of a blue New Orleans exchange certificate. (1) According to Wishnietsky, Pradat also published two eleven star Confederate patriotic envelopes. One bears an eleven star banner on a lanyard topped flag pole with the notation "L.E. Pradat, Gothic Store" to the left. It is postmarked Shieldsborough, (now Bay St. Louis) Mississippi, February 18. The second Pradat patriotic cover also bears an eleven star flag along with a logo for the 7th Regiment Mississippi Volunteers, Company C Almite Rifles Company C was formed from volunteers in Almite County, an area roughly twenty miles north and west of Pass Christian. It is postmarked Corinth Miss., April 17. Both envelopes date from 1862.
Although the designs on the covers and the scrip vary slightly, there is no question they are all the product of the same Louis E. Pradat of Pass Christian, Mississippi. Little else is known of Pradat. In the post war era, he served as postmaster of the Pass Christian office from 1866 to 1868. His tenure was relatively brief either because of his past support for the Confederacy (those unable or unwilling to swear a loyalty oath were removed as postmasters in 1868) or because of a dispute with the Postmaster General in Washington DC regarding expenses he accrued as postmaster. In Pradat's case, vouchers filed with the US War Department indicate that he did receive payment from the Confederate government for services rendered in 1861. Such payments would technically disallow his service as a postmaster in the post Civil War South. In addition, in 1868, Pradat sought the intervention of the law firm of Hughes, Denver and Peck in Washington DC to resolve a dispute with the US Post Office regarding the construction of new boxes and hiring an assistant, expenses not reimbursable for a Class 4 post office.(2) Although no post 1868 information pertaining to Pradat has been located, the scrip he printed in 1861 or 1862 serves Confederate philatelists by identifying him as the only known Mississippi printer of Confederate patriotic designs. [Editor's Note: Steven Boyd is a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of The Civil War in Miniature: Union and Confederate Patriotic Envelopes and their Significance forthcoming in 2010 from Louisiana State University Press.] 2 The disagreement is outlined in his letters dated March and July 1868 to the Washington D.C. law firm of Hughes, Denver and Peck. In those letters he declares his willingness to pay the disputed amounts if required. He asks only for the firm to explain the situation to the Postmaster General in DC and to reach a final resolution. His letters are in the Lilly Library, Indiana University. |
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