From Jerome to Allie, May 3, 1863

From Jerome to Allie, May 3, 1863

Peirce, Jerome

Allie

Middletown, KY.

From Jerome to Allie

Jerome Peirce

Jerome Peirce Collection, National Park Service

HIST 428 (Spring 2020), University of Mary Washington

1863-05-03

NPS, Civil War Study Group, Paul and Louise Marahrens (Transcribers)

For educational purposes with no commercial use. Courtesy of National Park Service, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP, FRSP 16095-16102 (FRSP-00904).

6.10 X 4
8.75 X 10.75
16.15 X 10.5
8.7 X 10.6
Jpg

English

Text

Letter #108

Middletown, KY.

LETTER TRANSCRIPTION

Middletown Ky. Sunday P.M. May 3rd 1863
My dearest Wife,
I am sitting here in my tent, have been looking out upon a tree (at the left hand), which the rain and a beautiful rainbow has beautified. So like a painting that I wish I could transfer [it] to this paper and send [it to] you as a memento of this camp, the third since we left Camp “Dick [Robinson]”. It has showered considerably for two days, tho’ not yesterday.
Another afternoon march yesterday of about ten miles. We are now in a rough portion of the state, thinly settled, there being only three or four houses here to claim the name of a town. We are surrounded by hills on every side with [the] Green River a few rods from our tent, taking its name from the color of the water. Early this P.M. took a bath in it and felt much refreshed. We are having fitful showers like April, one moment looking like clearing off, and then raining again.
Was very busy this A.M. with little things that need “fixing” a little, but found time to attend the Services about 3 o’clk. The chaplain spoke on reading the Scriptures and very well. A shower interrupted us.
Took a short walk after supper (5 o’clk) up a steep hill the other side of the road, which commands a very pretty view of the country, which looks much like the scene from old Tully, only the hills are not so high. (Since I began the boys have commenced chattering and making it unpleasant. Will have a candle and quiet, by and by).
After Tattoo. Mail arrived and how glad was I to receive letters from your dear self, Abbie and Ellen and Edwd. P. etc. of the 26th Vlt. [Volunteers]. I feel much better in spirits than when some of my late letters were written. You will understand this.
All is quiet in the tent. Seven of us of the ‘Colors’ in one tent, a candle burning, fixed in a bayonet, all under the blankets but Sergeant Goodspeed (of Worcester) and we are busy writing to [our] dear ones. He has nice little pictures of wife and four children like yours, fixed in a little movers case, the oldest thirteen, the youngest six.
Well, the first Sabbath in May! and through many obstacles, such as the damp and mud of a low camp in rainy weather, the camp “talk” not always in keeping with the day, rumors and guesses etc. etc., but still my thoughts stole to you at church, amid congenial scenes, and I felt that I was still with you and believed that some comforting words from able lips [were] still bearing your spirits up, and so I was comforted.
I must not omit a very interesting item of today. A family of refugees from E. Tennessee has been among us. A man of years with three daughters from perhaps nineteen to near thirty years, all intelligent and well appearing, wanderers as it were from Rebel violence. The story was too horrible for narration in full. The youngest girl had an eye gouged out by a bayonet while defending herself from ruffian hands, and one finger is gone from the shot fired which killed the villain whom her father slew in his frenzy, and it seems he literally cut him to pieces. They are lingering near here awaiting their chance to return. The father has been in the Union service and wounded. He is a large noble looking man, with a settled expression of grief and suffering such as I never before saw. I entered an officer’s tent when the four were conversing and contributed the best half of what I had left, felt I done it in a good cause. They were comfortable, well-to-do people of the staunch Union stock, and refused at the peril of their lives to join the miserable rebels. The home was attacked and here they are one of Parson Brownlow’s scenes to the life. Over a hundred dollars has been raised for them in the Brigade. The youngest, who is wounded, is exceedingly modest and pretty and all fine appearing. Such things are what will nerve the arm when the conflict comes.
We have rumors of a great victory at Fredericksburg and pray it be so. Very interesting letters in the ‘Journal’ (enclosed in the “Register”). I greatly rejoice at the result at Suffolk and I hope the Rebel Army at F. [Fredericksburg] [Changed to brackets] will be destroyed, between F. [Fredericksburg] {Changed to brackets] and Suffolk. We expect to go to Columbia Ky. near the border and where the RRoad [Railroad] connects with Louisville and where we can draw supplies and so “hold on” for the next move. Have got nicely rested and expect to move tomorrow again.
I have written every day since we left Camp “Dick”, to Alonzo, Abbie, or yourself, so you will know how we are getting on. Tell Abbie, her letter done me good, and is fully felt and appreciated. Tell Ellen I forgot to enclose the flowers but they were so crushed I would not have sent them, will sometime.
You speak of my writing the S. [Sabbath] School. I find the scenes I am passing thru’ so great in contrast with it, I find it impossible to address them directly, but as the “spirit moves” I utter my feelings in a way which perhaps have a meaning for all in S. [Sabbath] School. In my last to Charles there may be a word that may do good. As Miss Waldo says, in substance, these times will impress the minds of the young, so that a deeper love of country may be the fruits, among many good results to follow from the present events.
I shall feel quite happy to think of you with “friends” as Ellen says, and on the whole the look of things is more cheering than for a long time.
My candle is most down and I must close. I dare say I forget much. Have seen Ben E. today as usual. Called on the Tennesseans with me and contributed his “mite”. I have plenty of stamps just now. Hope to see the paymaster again at the halt, Columbia perhaps.
It seems strange about Eddy Haynes. What can be the matter? Wrote to Billerica a few days ago. Shall do so, as often as possible. Letters from Orange but don’t know the news. It has been very sickly there of late tho’.
I send this soiled paper, as we are moving and spare the last for camp. Excuse all appearances, broke my ink stand again, the day at Stanford, so pencil must answer. Give some message to Lulu from me and much love to all friends and believe me ever yours
wholly
Jerome

Mond [Monday] Morn [Morning]
Clearing off, warm, uncertain about moving today. Saw a slip from the Boston “Journal” from near Bryantsville (Camp Dick) speaking of the trip to Cin. [Cincinnati] etc. and complementing the Col. etc. All quite just. The Col. is growing more popular.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES (Josef Rokus)

NOTE 1: Camp Dick Robinson was a large Union Army organizational and training center located near Lancaster in rural Garrard County, Kentucky. The camp was established on August 6, 1861, despite the protests of Governor Beriah Magoffin, a strong secessionist and Southern sympathizer. It was located about halfway between Cincinnati and the Cumberland Gap, and was about 30 miles from Lexington, Kentucky. It was constructed on the farm of Captain Dick Robinson, a strong pro-Union supporter. The post served as a rallying point for local loyalists, as well as for Unionists who had left their homes in eastern Tennessee in order to enlist in the Union army. In 1862, the Confederate Army seized the camp and renamed it "Camp Breckinridge," in honor of Confederate general and former U.S. Vice President John C. Breckinridge, a native Kentuckian. The advance of the Union army into the region forced the Rebels to abandon the camp, and Federal troops regained its possession for the remainder of the war. After hostilities ceased in 1865, the camp was phased out of existence.

NOTE 2: The Green River is a 384-mile-long tributary of the Ohio River that rises in Lincoln County in south-central Kentucky. The river was named after Nathanael Greene, a general of the Revolutionary War.

NOTE 3: Abbie (Abigail) Jaquith was Allie’s younger sister. Abbie was born in 1836, and she died in 1915. Allie (Albinia) was born in 1834, and she died in 1920.

NOTE 4: Edward Peirce was the son of Foster and Catherine Peirce, Foster being one of Jerome’s brothers. Therefore, Edward Peirce, who was born in 1845, was a nephew of Jerome.

NOTE 5: Samuel A. Goodspeed enlisted at age 38 from Worcester, Massachusetts, as a sergeant in Company C on August 13, 1862. He was promoted to First Sergeant on June 27, 1863, and to Second Lieutenant on Jul 17, 1863, followed by a promotion to First Lieutenant on January 3, 1864. Goodspeed resigned from the Army on April 20, 1864.

NOTE 6: William Gannaway "Parson" Brownlow (1805 – 1877) was an American newspaper publisher, Methodist minister, book author, prisoner of war, lecturer, and politician. He served as Governor of Tennessee from 1865 to 1869 and as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875. Brownlow rose to prominence in the 1840s as editor of the Whig, a polemical newspaper in East Tennessee that promoted Whig Party ideals and opposed secession in the years leading up to the Civil War. Brownlow's uncompromising and radical viewpoints made him one of the most divisive figures in Tennessee political history and one of the most controversial Reconstruction Era politicians of the United States.

NOTE 7: The Second Battle of Fredericksburg, also known as the Second Battle of Marye's Heights, took place on May 3, 1863, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as part of the Chancellorsville Campaign of the Civil War.

NOTE 8: The “Alonzo” Jerome referred to in his letters was Seth Alonzo Ranlett. Ranlett enlisted in Co. B of the 36th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment as a Private on July 24, 1862, at age 22, and he was from Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was promoted to First Sergeant on August 27, 1862, and was commissioned as a First Lieutenant on December 1, 1862. On December 17, 1862, he was appointed Adjutant of the Regiment. He was mustered out “on account of physical disability from disease incurred in the service” on February 20, 1864.
Ranlett was born on March 18, 1840, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and he died May 21, 1905, in Newton, Massachusetts. Ranlett’s wife was Ellen Peirce Ranlett, with a date of birth of March 22, 1842, and a date of death of January 12, 1914. They were married on January 21, 1864. Ellen Peirce was one of the children of Foster Peirce and his wife Catherine Abby Beaman. Also, Foster Peirce was a brother of Jerome. Therefore, the Ellen that Jerome mentions in his letters was one of Jerome’s nieces, and starting on January 21, 1864, Alonzo was the husband of one of his nieces.

NOTE 9: The Sabbath School is mentioned in this letter because Jerome was the Sabbath School Superintendent at the church in Orange, Massachusetts, that the Peirce family attended before he enlisted.

NOTE 10: The “Col.” referred to in the letter was Henry Bowman, from Clinton, Massachusetts, who enlisted as a captain in the 15th Massachusetts Volunteers on August 1, 1861. He was captured at Ball’s Bluff, Loudon County, Virginia, on October 21, 1861. He was a prisoner of war at Richmond and was a hostage for Confederates held in New York for trial as pirates. Bowman was exchanged in August 1862. On August 22, 1862, he was promoted to colonel, commanding the 36th Massachusetts. He resigned on July 27, 1863, but was recommissioned in October of 1863. He subsequently served in different units and served at Baltimore and Philadelphia until the close of the war.

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