The following sympathy letter was written by Henry Elijah Parker (1821-1896) while serving as the Chaplain of the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry during the American Civil War. Henry’s great-great-grandson, Lawrence A. Brown, inherited his ancestors letters, papers, books, and other family treasures in 1989 and published a book in 1992 to showcase the best 70 letters and other documents in the collection. He shared all of the letters on Roots Web which are fascinating to read. Much of the collection includes political commentary, typical of mid-19th century. Henry was a personal friend of President Franklin Pierce, a member of his congregation on Concord, N. H. Henry “wrote and received letters from President Pierce and was a guest of his at the White House during the Pierce presidency. The record of this visit, along with drafts of several letters to President Pierce, are included in a journal that Parker kept during the years of 1854 to 1855. The Civil War is a central focus of many of the letters Henry wrote to his wife Mary during the period of somewhat more than a year that Henry served as a chaplain in the 2nd New Hampshire Volunteer Regiment. There are first hand accounts of battles as well as Henry’s own reflections on the war and its effect on him at a personal level.” The entire collection inherited by Lawrence Brown was subsequently gifted to the New Hampshire Historical Society (Call No. 2021.061).

In a letter from Henry’s collection posted on Roots Web, datelined on 13 January 1862—just prior to the following letter, Henry wrote his wife, “It has been one of the rainiest days of the season today. It has stopped, however, this evening, and it is now blowing cold. We lost another of our men last night from typhoid pneumonia. His death has seemed very sad to me. The funeral services will be tomorrow morning, when the remains will be taken to his native place, Roxbury N.H.: his name was Lawrence. An uncle of his was an old friend of Horatio’s. How I pity his poor father and mother.”

What follows is a transcript of the letter that Henry wrote to Asa and Clarissa (Johnson) Lawrence of Roxbury Center, Cheshire county, New Hampshire, expressing his sympathies for the death of their son Alanson Rawson Lawrence (1841-1862). Alanson was 19 years old when he enlisted as a private in Co. A in April 1861.

T R A N S C R I P T I O N

2nd New Hampshire Regiment
Near Hooker’s Headquarters
Doncaster, Charles county, Maryland
January 15th 1862

My dear Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence,

Although a stranger to you, I desire to express my sincere sympathy with you in the sad trial which has come upon you. The loss of your son so suddenly and under such circumstances is a very great and sore affliction. I pray that God may comfort and support you.

When your son was first brought to the hospital, I thought his sickness would not be severe and that he would return to his quarters again in a few days. But his disease soon took a very unfavorable turn and he rapidly sank under it. The very wet and changeable weather we have had for a week past must have been particularly trying to one suffering as he was from typhoid pneumonia. He bore his sickness very patiently without a word of complaint, I think. He was inclined to sleep nearly all the time and his reason was considerably affected as is so apt to be the case in the disease under which he was laboring. There hence was little opportunity to converse with him. Had he been more conscious of his situation, he undoubtedly would have had some kind and tender messages for you all; for from what I can learn of him, he was warm-hearted and affectionate in his nature.

His comrades were strongly attached to him and his Captain could not speak of him today with me except with tears flowing down his face. He says he was a good soldier—always filling his place well and well-deserving praise. Think of him as one ready to lay down his life for our beloved country and as having done it and so as having earned the honor of a patriot soldier’s death. It would have been a melancholy comfort to you to have been with him in his last hours and I am sorry it was deprived you. But such was God’s will. May His consolations be given you. May you be enabled to carry the burden of your grief to Him who “bare our griefs aand carried our sorrows,” and who praises to give rest to them who labor and are heavy-laden that come to Him.

We who are here feel for you in your bereavement & parental grief; kindred and friends around you will feel for you; but none will know how to pity you so fully or will sympathize with you so truly as He who alone is capable to comfort you now as you need. Go to Him with your affliction and may you find it made the instrument of bringing much blessings to your hearts of a spiritual nature, and to the souls of your mourning children so that you will say even in this world, “God was good in this affliction” as you will undoubtedly say hereafter.

Trusting that the Divine Comforter will do for you in this hour of your need what earthly friends cannon, I remain, respectfully and sympathizingly yours, — Henry E. Parker

Chaplain, 2d N. H. Regiment