Raynors HCA 2015-05
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/21/2015
A good war-date Union officer's letter, 4pp. 4to., written by 1st Lt. Cheyney W. Nields, Co. A, 30th Penn. Vols. (1st Reserves), "Camp near catlett's Station, Va., April 23, 1862," in part: "…our pleasant quarters on the most beautiful farm I ever saw…we marched for sometime through a woods…in much ankle deep…[on] emerging from the woods we came suddenly upon this splendid property. The [Union] Guard took up…quarters in the owner's house and directed us to take possession of the overseers residence. We marched to the house and are now…pleasantly quartered there…Mott & I and two or three others occupy one room while…the men are scattered through the remaining rooms in the house and the rest in the negro quarters immediately around. All the buildings were deserted and we had nothing to do but enter…the farm contains 1100 acres with but little timber upon it…all the fields have been used for grazing …fine residences are entirely deserted by the whites and in many cases occupied only by the negro servant…seem to exist solely on corn bread & milk…a few miles distant the Blue Ridge looking like a dense lead colored cloud…at the foot of one of the peaks…White Sulphur Springs was pointed out to me…there was a little row of log huts going to each farm [giving] the appearance of having a little village…these were the negro quarters, a style of buildings with while you are familiar. All of them…deserted the slaves either having been taken South or had escaped within our lines. We only entered two oft he houses. The first one was…of the working classes…was in a state of filthy confusion. The owners was lying sick in a be…the children were besmeared with mud…we took some of the milk, bought some butter and went on. The next house…was a fine old style residence house…had been deserted by the owner on the advance of our troops and we found no one…but an old blind negress and an old man…who said that they were there only on sufferance during the absence of the owner…[they] seemed to be in the last stages of poverty. The old man had had his leg injured and was laying on the floor wrapped up in a few filthy quilts and his wife who sat in the room seemed to have no clouting upon her but her outside dress…the old man with a suspicious earnestness tried to convince us that he had been "Union to the last" but…only led to a conviction that he was not as loyal as he moth be…we are in McDowell's Corps…we may move on as far as Fredericksburg…Cheyney." VG
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