CSA 5 variety, 10¢ rose with enormous margins all around, position 10 with “G” and “E” joined at bottom (see closeup of stamp), affixed upside down (sometimes said to be a message of love from sender to recipient) and tied neat ROME / Ga. // JUL / 25 cds on cover to Mrs. Ira. R. Foster, Atlanta, Ga. Ex Judd. $800.

Col. Ira Roe Foster was Georgia Quartermaster General. He was born on January 13, 1813, in Spartanburg, S.C. He first studied medicine and then practiced in South Carolina. In 1841, he became a licensed lawyer in Cherokee County, Ga., where he also served as state legislator. Foster had extensive business interests in land, and in flour and sawmills, in north-central Georgia and Alabama. He remained active in state politics into the Reconstruction period. During the Seminole Indian War in 1836, Foster served with distinction as a colonel of a mounted infantry, but was seriously wounded. He recovered and joined the Georgia militia in 1842, and became aide-de-camp for the Commander-in-Chief. George W. Crawford, governor of Georgia, made him a brigadier general in 1844. During the Civil War, Georgia Governor Joseph Brown appointed Foster quartermaster general for the state of Georgia, an office which he continued to fill after the collapse of the Confederacy. He worked tirelessly to maintain supplies and clothes for Georgia soldiers throughout the war. In 1865, Foster traveled to Virginia where he was first imprisoned by the Union Army as a member of the Confederate army, and then commissioned by the army to distribute livestock and supplies throughout Georgia. Foster married Mildred Arthur Creighton Crooks in 1842; they had four children.