Twenty years ago, Sam Snyder picked up 23 letters as a box lot at a Yorktown Auctions event.

Snyder, now Yoe's borough council president, checked some history books at the time to see if he could find any information about the letters' author. Nothing showed up, so he stopped searching.

Earlier this year, Snyder decided to bring the letters with him when he visited a fellow history buff who was in the hospital. He did a quick Internet search to see if he could find information now on the author, Chester Alan Arthur -- and discovered his letters had been written by the 21st U.S. president.

What makes Snyder's find even more historically significant is that Arthur, who lived from 1830 to 1886, mandated that all his papers and correspondence be destroyed upon his death, Snyder said.

Snyder contacted the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center in Saratoga Springs, and he went there earlier this month to have the letters digitized.

The state-run museum, which is part of the New York National Guard, is primarily a Civil War museum. It was started with artifacts that New York men brought back with them after serving in the Civil War.

"They are a wonderful donation," Jim Gandy, museum assistant librarian and archivist, said about the letters. "I have already scanned them and put them on the Internet so that researchers can get to them."

Museum director Michael Aikey said the letters are important because they give insight into the

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background of what was going on in New York to support the Civil War.

Aikey said Arthur was New York's assistant quartermaster general, then quartermaster general. The letters are an interesting group of correspondence, he said.

"Not only do the letters show what is going on but it shows you politics is ever present -- not much changes," he said.

ABOUT CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR
Earlier this year, Sam Snyder, Yoe's borough council president, discovered that letters that he has owned for two decades were written by Chester Alan Arthur -- the 21st U.S. president.

Here a few facts about the former president:

--- Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vt. in 1829.

--- Served as quartermaster general of the State of New York during the early years of the Civil War.

--- Served as the 21st U.S. president from 1881 to 1885.

--- The Arthur administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law.

Source: www.whitehouse.gov

ONLINE
To view the letters, go to www.dmna.state.ny.us/historic/reghist. Click on "civil," then "Arthur" for a listing of the documents.

Also of interest

· Chester A. Arthur made no documented stop in York County. But find out which presidents did visit.