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Feb  3rd 1904
My brothers insist that I should write
a continuation of the records our
Mother has left of the family, but
I am afraid there is little of interest
which I can add, as I moved away
from  Wytheville soon after the close
of the war, & for 15 years saw very little
of the other members of the family.
I was not even able to be with them
during the illness, or at the time of
the death of our father, which was
a great grief to me.
Mother’s records of the war are very
megre & I can add something to them.
There was no finer Southern than
father, his whole soul was with
the South, & he gave his whole time
to helping the Soldiers, sick or well,
in every way possible.  His faith in
the justice of our cause & the certainty
of our success was so great, that the
end was a shock to him.  I will
mention here an incident as a proof
of this.  One morning early in April
2nd
1865 --  two Federal soldiers stopped
at the gate & asked for breakfast.
Father replied that he was in their power
& had to obey their commands &would
get what he could for them.  As he
didn’t ask them into the house they
sat on the steps & quickly ate what was
given them.  My little brothers staid &
talked to them & they told them the
war was over & Gen Lee had surrendered
Robt ran in & told father but he would
not believe it, & when the men pulled
out their rolls of “green backs”? & wanted
to pay for their breakfast, he told them
that was not the currency of his [underscored] country
& he had no use for it.
The first communications we had
with our Northern relations told of the
death of Father’s mother which occurred
early in the war. She had been south
& knew more of the truth, & had very
little patience with the fanatics around
her, & when she heard that one of her
Grandsons up there had joined the
army, to come & fight his cousins in
the South, it was more than she could
bear, she took her bed & never got up again.
3rd
But I will begin at the time when
our soldiers were ordered to the front,
for then our work commenced.
April 23rd  1861 the “Wythe Greys,”? a fine
Company, in new uniforms, which were
partly made by the ladies, when they
went to Harpers Ferry, a year ago to guard
John Brown, went off amid the tears
& cheers of friends who had gone with
them to the station.  When I got home
from there I found my youngest
brother Edward very sick with scarlet
fever & in a few days Ella took it
too & we had a weary anxious time
nursing them.  Ella was extremely
ill & we almost despaired of her recovery
but the Lord was merciful & restored
them both to health again.
Very soon the Ladies of the Town
& county organized the “Soldier’s Aid
Society”?.  We had rooms in the centre
of the town where those of us who
could leave home met to work.
Mother was seldom able to leave
home long at a time, but she was
a valuable worker at home, & her needle
by day & knitting needles by night, were
4th
seldom idle. There was a great deal
of sickness in town that summer.
There was a recruiting camp here &
many of the volunteers brought
their families with them, thinking
the war would be over in a few weeks
or months.  Father & Mother spent a
great deal of their time with the sick
& she sometimes staid all night with
very ill children.  One of our heaviest
as well as most useful duties that
summer was ministering to the
wounded Soldiers who passed here
on the trains on their way South
to their homes on furlough.  Our army
was very poorly provided with hospitals
during the first year of the war
& most of the wounded who were
able to travel were sent home.  They
had very scant, if any, rations & the
cars in those days were not even provided
with water, so we always found them
in a pitiable condition.  Several of the
young ladies canvassed the town & raised
a fund with which to buy provisions,
but everything was getting scarce by that
time.  We bought beef & flour & Mother
5th
had them cooked & fixed up a basket
every day for us to take to the train.
Every one who had butter milk sent
it  & all the boys, white & black were
set to bringing water to fill the
canteens..  There was a great cry for
clean rags for their wounds, & these
were as hard to get as were provisions.
We relieved in a measure the
sufferings of many hundreds
of them during that summer
& the next.
It was in July 1863 that we had our
first personal experience with the
Yankees.  When my first baby Kathleen
was three weeks old, there was a raid
made on Wytheville as they were anxious
to reach & break the R.R.  There were no
soldiers here at that time, but some
had been ordered up from Dublin to
protect the Town & R.R.  They failed
to get here in time so we had only
the Home guard of old men & boys
to meet the enemy.  There was a
short skirmish as they entered town
in which we lost one man & they about
20 I think six killed & wounded, but
6th
tho they had posession of the place
they were afraid to go to the depot
as there was a train blowing there on
which they were told we had troops.
As soon as father heard they were coming
he went down town & helped open boxes
of ammunition & give out arms to the
Home guard until they were all supplied
then he came home.  A party of the
raiders cut across the fields & came in
on the street behind our place.  They called
to an Irishman, who lived in Father’s
cabin, to surrender & go with them. he
refused on the ground of being a British
subject, & they shot him dead in his door.
They then came on to our gate & saw father
sitting in the porch & called him to go
with them, he objected on account of his
age & profession & Robt.  who was standing
there heard one of them say shoot him
& another raised his gun just as Mother
stepped out of the door to give Father his
overcoat & persuade him to go, so the gun
was lowered & he marched off down the
road.  They tried to find out from him
7
the location of a R.R. bridge they wanted
to destroy, but he would give them no informa-^tion
on the subject(:), so they soon released their
prisoners & made off.  They set fire to several
buildings in town, which burned
all night, but there was no wind
& the fire did not spread.  Our cook
Betty went off that night, thinking
the Yankees would take her with
them, but in this she found she was
mistaken & sent one of her friends
to tell father where she was, thinking
he would be delighted to get her back,
but she was mistaken again & would
not let her come back any more as
she had shown she could not be
trusted.  We made no efferts to get
another servant after this but Mother
with the help of the girls did all the
work, even the washing.  I had a
negro girl as nurse  who helped some.
We had another raid in Dec 1864, but
tho’ a squad of Yankees spent the
night in our yard they did no
damage, beyond burning some
of the fence.  Our  government was
8  using a vacant church on Main 8
St for the storing of ordinance
this was fired, & a bombardment
from bursting shell kept up all
night, but without casualties.
In February 1865 Dr R’s health
being somewhat improved he
was put on light duty in the
Medical department & ordered
to Donvill where he was at the
time of the surrender. We
had no news from him until
he reached home six weeks later.
9
It may be of interest to our grand
children to know what we did
for clothes during the war, so I
will record a little of my experience.
In 1863 when my first baby was
a few months old, I was seized
with a desire to go to Richmond to
see my Grand parents & show
my baby.  As Dr. R. had not been
received in the army on account of
bad health, I persuaded him to
go with me.  Then came the question
of clothes.  I bought from a country
woman who wove it, enough
grey cotton cloth to make me a
travelling dress with a little shoulder
cape of the same.  Mother had a dress
pattern of brown cashmere which had
been given her some time before
& never made up, this she lent [underscored]
me & I made a dress to fit me &
used it while I was away.
Soon after Sallie was sent to
Rich,d to school & the brown dress
was altered for her.  While she
was down there we had St. official
notice that our eldest brother had  10
been murdered by deserters in the
Louisianna swamps.  There was no
way of gaining further information
so we had to accept that & proceeded
to put on mourning.  The brown dress
was turned over to the dyer & served
as a mourning robe for several months
when we heard that the report of our
brothers death was a mistake.  Our
ingenuity was taxed again, & some
red braid procured to trim the
black dress.  My mourning out fit
consisted of a black calico, which I
procured by exchanging a brown
calico, for which i had seccretly paid
$100 pr yard.  It was only worn when I
went out, so was in very good condition
when I was done with it.  A friend
who had lost her husband begged
me to let he have it, & gave in
return a partly worn colored calico
dress & a white cambric baby’s dress.