Our regiment, the Sixteenth New York, was about two weeks stationed at “ Camp Woolsey,” near the Capitol, and then crossed the Potomac and pitched its tents on Cameron Run, a little west of Alexandria, in the fields which were once the property of our great-great-Aunt Ricketts, whose plantation was famous for its flour, ground by the mill on the Run. This Aunt Ricketts, a sweet-faced woman, whose likeness was among those taken by Saint Memin about 1805, brought up your dear grandmother (left an orphan in 1814), whose letter of July 19th speaks of those days:—
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Mother to Georgeanna and Eliza8 Brevoort Place, Friday, July 19, 1861.
My dear Girls: A loving morning kiss to you both, and three hearty cheers for the success of the grand forward movement thus far. I have just been devouring the “Times”—that part of it, at least, and that only, which tells of the war movements—everything else is passed over with a very slighting glance. We feel the intensest interest now in every tramp of the soldiery as they advance southward, and wait with great impatience from night till morning, and from morning till night again, for our papers. Georgy, how deeply interesting was your letter to us, written in the doorway of the tent at Alexandria!—not the first tent letter we have had from you, but how different the circumstances of this last from any other! and how strange to me that poor old Alexandria, where all of my eleven brothers and sisters were born, and where my father and mother and relatives lie buried, should be the scene of such warfare—the camping ground of my children under such circumstances! You must have been very near the graves of your grandparents, and that of my dear venerated great-aunt, Mary Ricketts, who was a loving mother to me after the death of my own, and in whose house Abby was born. Cameron, too, was one of the places and homes of my childhood. It was the country-seat of this same good aunt, and on the grounds, some distance from the dwelling-house, stands a dilapidated building, in its day a fine “mansion” for that part of the country, which was the original home of the family, and where my mother was married to a then “affluent merchant” of Alexandria.
“Cameron Run” was the scene of all our childish sports, where we used to fish and sail and bathe and have all sorts of good times; it was then a wide deep stream, and formed the boundary line along the bottom of the garden at Cameron, and was lined on either side by magnolia trees; and when the old family coach, with its grey horses, was called up to the door on Sunday mornings to take us into town for church, we each had our magnolia in hand, showing where our morning walk had been, and our side of the old church was known by its perfume. All this is as fresh in my memory as though fifty years had been but as many days! I perfectly remember every spot about the old place;—but everything had changed almost entirely when I was last there, though I look back to it still as it was in my childhood. More than ever do I now regret my not having kept a diary of my early life, which might have been interesting to my children.
I feel very much as you do, my dear Eliza, that “somehow or other I cannot write letters now,” and, indeed, I cannot sit down very long at anything. My mind is in a state of unsettledness, if I may coin a word —a sort of anxious suspense, all the while, and I feel better when on the jump, going about. I have been making up a lot of currant jelly, some of which I will send on to the hospitals. I am going out by and by to get a work basket for little May—her birthday present. She is to keep her birthday and little Bertha’s together, to-morrow, by having a tea-party on the lawn. I shall fill the basket with goodies for them. . . . What an imposing sight it must have been when the troops all set forward together, and then the arrival at Fairfax! and then at Centreville! the rebels flying before them and leaving all their goods behind! I hope this may be the case all along, that they will throughout have a bloodless victory! . . . We look any instant for your letters. I say constantly to myself, “What will be the next news?” I dread to hear from Manassas, but hope the enemy will continue to retreat, until the whole land is clear of rebels. I cannot help thinking it will be an easy victory, and without bloodshed. May God bless and keep you, my dear children, and graciously prepare us for whatever may be his will. Give my love and blessing to Joe when you write.
Most tenderly and lovingly yours,
Mother.
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Our letters from Camp Cameron were among those lost in the Morrell fire, but late in the war, when the Sanitary Commission wanted items for its paper, G. sent the following sketch of the camp:
“It was a pretty spot, our camp in a valley in Virginia—the hillside, covered with white tents, sloping to a green meadow and a clear bright little river. The meadow was part of my great-great-aunt’s farm years ago, and in the magnolia-bordered stream my grandfather’s children had fished and paddled. Now, we, two generations afterwards, had come back and pitched our tents in the old wheat fields, and made ready for war, and there were no magnolia blossoms any more.
“On the hills all about us the army was gathering, white tents springing up like mushrooms in the night. With their coming, came sickness, and sickness brought men of the next brigade into a poor little shanty close behind our headquarters. There we found them, one day, wretched and neglected, and ‘most improperly’ at once adopted them as our own. We asked no one’s permission, but went to work; had the house cleaned from top to bottom, shelves put up and sacks filled with straw; then we prescribed the diet and fed them just as we pleased. All this was a shocking breach of propriety, and I have no doubt the surgeon of the regiment was somewhere behind a fence, white with rage. Never mind, our men were delighted, and one dear little blue-eyed boy, who had blown his lungs through his fife, was never tired of saying and looking his thanks. Finally we persuaded the General to break up the little den, and order all the sick sent to general hospitals, and our breaches of etiquette came to an end.”
