The parchment scroll, printed in calligraphy and bearing the signatures of both President William McKinley and Secretary of War Elijah Root, arrived at Fort Meade safely rolled in a mailing tube in March. The parchment is in nearly perfect condition. The cardboard tube, addressed to Fenton in the perfect penmanship of the past and bearing a military mail designation in lieu of postage, looks like it has survived 107 years in the U.S. postal system.

"I'm thinking he never got it," Charles Rambow, director of the Fort Meade Museum, said. "I think it's been floating around in the postal system for a number of years. It's called snail mail."

Wacker delivered the antique military document to Rambow for lack of a forwarding address.

"This guy certainly doesn't have a mailbox here, so I thought, why not put it in the museum?" Wacker said

'snail mail'