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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;springfld.arsenal, post: 43733, member: 54&quot;]Posted on Company of Military Historians forum:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;A friend recently purchased a USN 1864 2nd Engineer&#039;s Commission, signed by Gideon Welles. Is it likely to be Welles&#039; signature or did he (and Edwin Stanton for Army commissions) use some sort of auto pen?&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Well we can eliminate auto pens, first used in US gov. in 1930&#039;s. Only other signature possible that would not be an individual signature by Welles himself would be a clerk&#039;s signing of his name.&nbsp; My friends in the naval history business in DC aren&#039;t positive but are fairly convinced that signatures by the Secretary of the Navy on officer&#039;s commissions were the real deal at least up to the 1990&#039;s if not to this day. </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyone know for sure?&nbsp; I have an email in to the office of SECNAV but no idea whether I&#039;ll get a reply.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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