7th Massachusetts Infantry - Wounded at Fredericksburg

Item LTR-9215

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 3 pages, written in period ink.


Camp Brightwood
August 25, 1861

Dear Brother,

I received your kind letter August 10th and wrote to you right off. I received a letter from home yesterday and they told me you had not got my letter yet. I wrote one to you and Georgette and directed them to North Andover, Mass. I am going to direct this to Andover and see if you will get this. If you go to North Andover, get those letters for I sent a leaf in Georgette’s that I got in Virginia when I went over there.

How do you get along in your store? I think your card is a very pretty one.

I had a very good passage out here from Taunton. In my letter that I wrote to you first I have given you a description so I will not go over it again – would you? I am well and tough but it is awful hard living I tell you.

We began to throw up breastworks for a fort about a fortnight ago and we have just got it done. 500 of us [went]to work on it all the time. It is called Fort Innes in honor of Colonel Innes of the New York 36th Regiment. It mounts 15 guns of the largest kind and it commands the roads leading from Harper’s Ferry to Washington. We are only five miles from Washington City. We have taken 5 secessionists and they look as if they had lost every friend in the world.

I will now give you bill of our fare.

Breakfast – coffee and bread
Dinner – salt horse and hard bread
Supper – bread and coffee

Han’t that sound like Copelands in Boston? That is all the news now so goodbye till another. Write often, won’t you?

From your affectionate brother, Ames Ramsdell

Direct your letters to Captain George W. Reed instead of Captain Harlow.