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Outlandish and Extravagant Facts from the Gilded Age

Khalid Elhassan May 31, 2022 37 min

9. The Gilded Age Was a Golden Age of Forgery

Gilded Age - The real life of soldiers like these Confederates was not as enjoyable as James Reavis had imagined — The real-life of soldiers like these Confederates was not as enjoyable as James Reavis had imagined. Fine Art America

When other soldiers noticed that Private Reavis got a whole lot of passes, he started a sideline business and sold his comrades forged passes. When the chain of command got suspicious and began to investigate, Reavis finagled a quick leave, ostensibly to get married. He then promptly hightailed it out of Confederate territory, and surrendered to Union forces. He even switched sides, and served for a while in a Union Army artillery regiment. After the Civil War, Reavis traveled to Brazil, and when he returned home, he got into real estate.

The Gilded Age was a great time for forgers. In the real estate line of business, Reavis discovered that the talent for forgery that he had discovered and honed when he served in the Confederate Army could come in real handy. Especially to clear up messy paperwork, and fix vague property titles. When clients were unable to sell land because they couldn’t establish clear ownership, Reavis would magically produce some document that everybody else had somehow “missed” before, and that cleared up ownership in no uncertain terms. The discovered documents were forged by him, of course.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.