A VIRGINIA BOY'S RECOLLECTIONS OF THE "60's"

For His Grandson

To a youngster of nine years all this excitement was intensely interesting, especially as my older brothers were all early enlisted for service in defense of states' rights. My having been named for an old army officer, instructor and friend of my brother John at West Point Military Academy no doubt added to my military fancies.

I joined a home guard company of older men and boys under my father's command for scout and guard duty and remember being posted as sentry at our end of the Rappahannock railroad bridge at Fredericksburg, in company with old Mr. Layton and a big-bodied kind-hearted young neighbor, Dick Berry, who afterwards joined Braxton's Battery (Fredericksburg Artillery) and was killed at Shepherdstown in the Sharpstown campaign, we heard. My brother James first enlisted in that battery with a number of young neighbors and friends of the Temple, Howison, Thorburn, Marye, Wallace, Eustace and Conway families of Fredericksburg and Stafford County and served with them on the Potomac until transferred to be with two other brothers in the cavalry.

I further busied myself watching troop trains passing our house and in hanging around with other boys over in town, talking to the soldiers, filling their canteens and mixing in their ranks while they listened to patriotic fire-eating speeches, mostly from men whose lives were so important to the country they never got under fire during the whole war, unless by accident.

The first camps over towards the Potomac were soon full of mumps, measles and camp fever, all more or less serious to raw troops. For lack of adequate hospital accommodations, many officers and men were cared for in the homes of neighboring citizens. I recall several cases we took care of - a Captain White and Privates Baugh and Guest of the Second Tennessee infantry from near Murfreesborough.