Jane Eliza Newton Woolsey to her daughter. July 3, ’62. My dear Eliza: What times you are living through! in the very midst, too, of everything as you are !–and how dark, very dark, it all looks to us this morning as we read the last “reliable ” accounts from the army before Richmond! Think [...]
One of the hospital duties of all the nurses at the front was writing letters home for the sick and wounded men, and sometimes the sad work of telling the story of their last few hours of life. That such letters helped to comfort sorrowful hearts, the following answer to one shows. The soldier was [...]
Jane Eliza Newton Woolsey to her son, Charles. June 29 or 30. Your last letter this moment come! We know not what to think. Dear E. [Eliza], what a heroine she shows herself. This slight wound may be the means of saving Joe from greater danger, as he must now lie by. Dear boy, how [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland’s Journal. June 28th. We went as far as West Point, followed by a train of schooners and barges running away like ourselves. There we lay through the evening and night, watching for the flames of burning stores at White House which did not burn, and for booming of guns which did not [...]
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey to Georgeanna Muirson Woolsey. Linen Room, New Haven Hospital, June 26th, ’62. My dearest G.: A lull in business gives me a chance to write a few lines to you and tell you how glad I was last night to find your letter waiting for me when I got home from my [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland’s Journal. . . . June 26th. Running away down the Pamunkey again as fast as we can go, escaping from Stonewall Jackson! All night the wood choppers were at work cutting down the woods at the White House to give the gunboats a chance to command the land beyond, and just now [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland’s Journal. . . . June 25th. General Van Vliet says that if I want to go to the front at any time and will send him word, he will have his wagon meet me and take me over to J’s camp. This morning Dr. Bigelow came back to our boat from the [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland’s Journal. Wilson Small, June 23. A very anxious day. An orderly from Brigade Headquarters brought word from Captain Hopkins that Joe was ill and unable to write. I at once put up a basket of stores for him–bedsack, pillows, sheets, arrowroot, etc., etc., to go by the orderly, and Charley telegraphed Generals [...]
Eliza Howland to Joe, Howland, her husband. Wilson Small, June –. This morning I have your Sunday note with the charming little poem. Who wrote it? Be sure and tell me. It is a poem, and though entirely undeserved, I value it very much indeed. [Poem by a Lieutenant of the 16th N. Y., dedicated [...]
From Edward Mitchell. White House, June 20, 1862. My dear Father: Heavy firing in the advance this A. M. Since writing to Fred. I have had no time to write another word. Sitting up late that night, I was waked up, with Drs. Jenkins and Haight, to go ashore for 24 hours at 3 A. [...]
Jane Eliza Newton Woolsey to her son Charles. New York, June, ’62. My dear Charley: Here are lots of scraps for you. Our basket is just going off to the steamer. I hope you will enjoy the gingerbread. We are all anxiety for further accounts since the battles of the last few days. The paper [...]
Abby Howland Woolsey to her brother. 8 Brevoort Place, June 17th. My dear Charley: We had just been reading in the Times about the scare at White House when Georgy’s letter arrived. We have read it aloud over the breakfast table, and are now going to enclose it to Mary and Carry at Astoria, that [...]
Dr. Hugh Lenox Hodge to Georgeanna Woosey. Philadelphia, June, 1862. Dear Georgy: Once more our paths have separated. . . . Upon my return with the wounded from the battle of Fair Oaks, I received appointment to a large hospital (1,500 beds), now building in West Philadelphia. I will live at home, but will be [...]
Harriet Roosevelt Woolsey to her sisters on the Virginia Peninsula, Georgeanna Woolsey and Eliza Howland. New York, June. Dear Girls: I write more for the sake of sending a letter by Dr. Draper, than because there is anything to tell you about. . . . I think Abby looks miserable and needs rest. I don’t [...]
While we were lying at White House in the Wilson Small, one day, Mr. Olmsted came to G. with the statement that “young Mr. Mitchell of New York, who had come down to help in the Commission’s Quarter-master’s department, was ill on the supply boat Elizabeth.” G. went across the plank to him at once, [...]
Hatty writes (Harriet Roosevelt Woolsey to her sisters): June 10. We shall send you the things you ask for by the steamer St. Mark to-morrow, and hope you may get them, though I have my doubts as to Charley’s wines making a sea journey safely with government employees on board ready to drink them up. [...]
Eliza Howland to her husband, Colonel Joseph Howland. Floating Hospital, White House, Sunday, June. We are having a delightful quiet Sunday–such a contrast to the last few days. A hundred and fifty men, to be sure, came down last night, but unless we have two or three hundred we think nothing of it nowadays. We [...]
Jane Stuart Woolsey to her sister, Georgeanna. Charley’s letter to the Post was quite a success and I advise him to continue his communications. The Vanderbilt, Government Hospital Ship, got in last night at six or seven, and will be emptied to-day, I suppose. There has been a great and general muss on the whole [...]
Georgeanna Woolsey to her mother. June 6, Wilson Small. We have on our boats nine “contraband” women from the Lee estate, real Virginia darkeys but excellent workers, who all “wish on their souls and bodies that the rebels could be put in a house together and burned up.” “Mary Susan,” the blackest of them, yielded [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland to her husband, Colonel Joseph Howland:– I enclose some comments about Casey’s division, and we all agree here that justice was not done to the men. It is surely hard enough to lose as terribly as they did without being reproached for cowardice. Abby says in a late letter– “Anna Jeffries came [...]
Some of the hurried notes in the small blank books we carried about with us (G’s tied to her belt) are characteristic, and somewhat mixed at the distance of 36 years. “78 pillow-cases, and 4 mattresses. Whiskey for 10, brandy for 4. W. T., 49th Ga., Co. D. C.G., both legs; handkerchiefs, arrowroot, bay-rum. V. [...]
Captain Curtis of the 16th, who had been a patient on board our Headquarters boat the “Small,” since his wound at West Point, went up in one of the transports to an Alexandria hospital. He found there our friend Chaplain Hopkins, still hard at work among the sick and wounded. The following letter from the [...]
Abby Howland Woolsey to her sisters, Georgy and Eliza, with the Sanitary Commission on the Peninsula Campaign. New York, June 2d, 1862. My dear Girls: Charley’s letter of Thursday came in this morning. He explained to us his system of numbering and sorting the men’s luggage, etc., which interested us very much, and shows us [...]
Charles William Woolsey to New York Evening Post. Sanitary Commission, Floating Hospital, Pamunkey River, Off White House, Va., May 31, 1862. The work of the Sanitary Commission, as connected with the army of the Potomac, is just at this time, as you doubtless know, a most important and indispensable one. More than two thousand sick [...]
Eliza Woolsey Howland to her husband, Joe. Floating Hospital, Off White House, May 27. Still not a word from you for a fortnight now. I am beginning to be very hungry, – not anxious, only hungry, for letters. I only hear in indirect ways that our division was near the Chickahominy a day or two [...]