Augusta County: Jedediah Hotchkiss to Nelly
Hotchkiss, December 17, 1862
Summary:
Jedediah Hotchkiss describes for his daughter Nelly the Battle of Fredericksburg,
tents for soldiers, local technique of "wattle" fencemaking, and a local
graveyard.
Dec. 17th, 1862
Moss Neck, Caroline Co., Va.
My Dear Little Nelly
I promised to write you a letter, when I was at home, so I will take a few
minutes this evening and [deleted: comply with] make my promise good.
I left home Sunday, you know, and went to New Hope that day, the next day I went
across the Blue Ridge Mountain and the next day went on to Orange Court House and then travelled nearly all day
through the woods, and where the road is sandy, and then got to where the army
was the next day, on the Mattapony River. If you
look in the large Atlas, in Virginia, you will find four rivers, the Mat, the
Ta, the Po and the Ny and they all come together and make
the Mat-ta-po-ny
river, near which we had our camp, among the
long-leaved pine trees, the evergreen holly bushes, with prickles on the edges
of the leaves; and the Sweet Juni trees that look as though they were winged, or
rather the little limbs look so, for the bark projects on each side and
causes
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the winged appearance I spoke of. We had a cold snow storm
while we were at Guinea Station near the Mattapony
river, but our cloth houses were very comfortable, for we had a stove, with the
pipe sticking out of the door, or the slit in the side[deleted: s] of
the tent, that serves for a door. Not far from our tent runs a pretty stream of
water, with a bottom of white sand and white and yellow quartz pebbles, that
look very prettily through the clear water. You never saw such fences as they
have here, they call them wattled fences -- they throw up a ridge of dirt,
leaving a ditch on one side, then they drive a row of stakes, nearly six inches
apart, along the top of the ridge, and then they get long, slender cedar limbs
and weave them in among the stakes, like the splints of a basket, and so make a
tight fence 3 or 4 feet high. Nearly all the fences here are wattled ones -- and
then they have cedar trees growing up by the sides of the fences, and we
sometimes go a long ways through two rows of pretty ever-green trees. The country here is very flat with a good many swamps,
but no very high hills, and a great many pine forests -- where the trees are all
pines, and very thick. I saw a very pretty grave
yard the other day, made by planting
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cedar trees in a ring and
they had grown up thick & had come together at the top and the limbs had
been kept cut off on the inside, and there was a place where you could go in,
and when in it was like a green house, shaped like half an egg, and the ground
on the inside was thickly covered with myrtle, and there were several graves
with nice marble slabs -- on the outside it looked like one big tree. I must now
tell you about a battle we had last Saturday, the 13th of
Dec., and I will make a little map for you to
look at and see how the armies were located when they fought. Look at the map I
have made for you. The roads are put down in red lines, our troops in black
lines and the Yankees in blue ones.
[Jedediah Hotchkiss sketched a somewhat detailed map]
Our army was on the hills in front of the Mine and Telegraph Roads, mostly in the woods, and we had cannons where you see a black line with a dot on each side. The enemy came across the river on pontoon, or boat bridges, made so -- [drawing of a pontoon bridge] of boats fastened in the stream[deleted: s] with planks laid across them, at Fredericksburg and at the mouth of Deep Run, and they came up into the flat where the short blue lines are & they had cannons where I have made short blue lines with dots beside them -- when they came up towards the woods where our men were we fired a great many thousand guns at them and they fired at us, and so we did for a long time, and we at last drove them back, having killed a large number of them and wounded many more -- We had a good many killed and wounded too, but not as many as they did, for we were protected by the woods -- Now they have gone away across the river, and we must thank the good Lord that he enabled us to whip them and drive them away, for they would come and destroy us and our country if they could.
We are now on a neck of land in a big bend of the river, called Moss Neck -- there is a great deal of pretty moss growing here.
I am glad you say so many good lessons, as your Ma tells me -- be a good girl and learn all you can -- help your Ma and be kind to every body and always good-natured and be sure to love God and do right. Kiss your sister Anna for Pa--
So good night, my daughter--
From Your Pa--
Jed. Hotchkiss
