The following letter was written by 19 year-old Henry Gordon Gibbs (1843-1915), the son of Ithamar P. Gibbs (1818-1897) and Juliette White (1822-1904) of Benson, Rutland county, Vermont.

Henry enlisted on 1 October 1861 as a private in Co. K, 1st Vermont Cavalry. He wrote the following letter from Camp Harris near Annapolis, Maryland, where we learn that he was chronically ill which led to his discharge for disability on 20 April 1862 without having seen any action.

Henry wrote the letter to his aunt, Emeline Jane (Gibbs) King (1822-1911), the wife of Moseley Frisbie King (1808-1888) of Benson, Rutland county, Vermont. Jane and Moseley were married in 1861; it being her second marriage.

Transcription

Camp Harris, Annapolis, Maryland
March 7th 1862

Dear Aunt,

I received yours with a heartfelt sense of gratitude. Your letter found me no better but I hope that this will find you and all the folks well and I hope that the next one you write will find me better [than] it did this time. I was very glad to have a letter from you, hoping that I may get another from you. I had a letter from Hiram Elwin Nelson. They were well and the folks. Aunt Margaret was well at the time, I had a letter from home the same day I got yourn. They was all well. I wish I could say the same but I cannot. I am not well and never expect to be again very soon. My lungs pain me a good deal and heart. Also. pleurisy in my side. I’m going to put on my pants today if I can. I shall come home if I ever get so that I can.

There is is about 25 in the hospital now. One crazy—one crazy as a loon. There is two men from Shoreham here. Mr. North and Mr. Chamberlin, the minister. Lester is better of his cold. I have been sick more than any other one in our company. The boys all feel bad for me but that makes it no better—only the looks. It is very pleasant to hear the robins, bluebirds, and all other kinds of birds are singing very sweetly this morning. The crows are a squealing like fury. It seems kind of queer to be all winter where the snow has not been over two inches deep. We have all the oysters we want. The boys go down to the Chesapeake Bay and get any quantity of them in the shell and all the pike they can lug. The pike weighs from 5 to 50 lbs.

I suppose you want to know what we have to eat, Well, I will tell you. We have potatoes, meat, bread, butter, tea, coffee, sugar, rice, molasses, hard crackers. They haint much like the ones we get up in Vermont. Hard enough to break one’s teeth out. Chreey G. is well and healthy. Give my respects to Mr. Aikens’ folks when you see them and tell them I have not forgot them. Give my love to Uncle Moseley, to Phinan Royal, Alice, Charles, and James, and to old Mr. King, & Mrs.

Hoping that you will endeavor to answer these few lines, I will close. This from your affectionate nephew to his aunt. — Henry G. Gibbs