Raynors HCA 2018-06
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/21/2018
A great war-date Confederate soldier's letter, 3pp. 8vo., written by Pvt. Ausker P[aris] Godfrey, Co. G, 8th Virginia Cavalry, "Camp Echols, Greenbrier Co., Va., Sept. they 18th, 1863," to his wife Elizabeth concerning the role he and his regiment played during the two-day (August 26-27, 1863) battle of Rocky Gap, West Virginia in which Confederate forces under the command of Col. George S. Patton (grandfather of the famed WWII American military commender) met and repulsed a nearly equal force under the command of Union cavalry commander, Gen. William W. Averell who was was ordered to find and destroy the Confederate saltpeter works and gunpowder mills in the Allegheny Mountains just beyond White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Needless to say, the battle ended in a victory for the Confederates. The rare account, the first we have ever found in the marketplace or institutionally, reads, as follows, in part: "…we had a very hard fight at the White Sulphur Springs or near that place. I was in the fight the last day…our fortifications was a fence. We was right between the cannonading…the shells and grape shots cut the fence all around us, but we all come out safe…the day before the fight commence there was 18 of our company run into the Yankee's camp in Pokahuntus and I was one of the 18 and we fired on them…turned our horses, made our escape…fell back to the company and then turned and fired on them again…then fell back about 6 miles…taken up camp and staid about 6 hours…then we was ordered then to the White. There aint much fun in such work I can tell you. There was a good many men killed…on both sides…we will leave here before long and I wont be sorry for it. The people is no very clever in this country. I think our company will get to go [on] a trip to the border before long if we whip them in Tennessee and if we go I will come home or die. I want to try to get a furlough…but they wont give a furlough at this time on account of the raids the Yankes is making. I haunt mutch time to write this evening for we move our camp today and it was late before I got to write…we have plenty of bull beef and flour to eat…Ausker P. Godfrey…". A. P. Godfrey, as thirty-year old farmer from Wyoming, Co., West Virginia, enlisted in the 8th Virginia Cavalry in September 1862. He was captured the following month in Kanawha Co. W. Va., and was confined in Wheeling, West Virginia and Camp Chase, Ohio before being exchanged at the end of 1863. He took the oath of allegiance at Charleston, W. Va., on May 9, 1865. The National Park Service Civil War soldier database shows that his name alternately Paris Godfrey and that he how he appears in the more popularly citied Civil War database. Expected wear, else VG 600-800
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