Harry Wright Autograph

[prewarsports]

You can have a telegram that is signed, but it is very rare. For example, I have a few telegrams that Jacob Ruppert and Harry Sparrow from the Yankees front office would write out, then have them sent and would keep the originals in their files.

Back in the 19th century/early 20th century you would walk into a Western Union office and pick up a telegram slip, write the message you wanted on it and take it to the clerk to have him send it. He would read it off your handwritten telegram and send it. These were then 99.9% of the time thrown away and were only kept for business purposes. On the other end, the telegram would come over the wire and the operator would write it in his hand and put it in a sealed envelope to have it delivered.

Since yours has the envelope with the name of the recipient, you have the latter version.

I owned this item at one point in time along with 40-50 other telegrams from the Bob Allen estate and I sold it as a telegram for the Wright/Delahanty content. While not signed by Harry Wright, it is still a 100% original item pertaining to (2) of the biggest names of the 19th century and a valuable and desirable piece and still is worth in the $500-$1000 range.

I hope that expains the process a little better. There is a neat little portayal of this in the Movie "The Assassination of Jesse James" from a few years ago where Bob Ford walks into an 1870's Western Union office and writes out his telgram and hands it to the operator and then explains "You might want to keep that" because of the significance of the content.