2023-08 Raynors HCA Live
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/26/2023
This letter was written by Gilson Mendall (1837-1887), the son of Sylvanus Mendall (1807-1872) and Mary Soule (1805-1874) of Canton, Oxford county, Maine. Gilson was married in March 1860 to Elmira Foye. According to enlistment records, Gilson entered Co. F, 9th Maine Infantry as a private in mid-September 1861 and was mustered out as a corporal after three years and 10 months service in July 1865.The 9th Maine Infantry was organized at Augusta and mustered in September 22, 1861. It proceeded to Washington and briefly served in the Washington Defenses before joining the expedition to Port Royal, SC, attached to the Department of the South. The 9th Maine participated in a number of minor combined operations resulting in the capture of Forts Walker and Beauregard and later occupied Fernandina, Florida. The regiment then shifted to operations at Charleston arriving at Hilton Head in January 1863, assigned to the 10th Corps.Datelined, Hilton Head, South Carolina January 16th 1862, 4pp on patriotic letterhead to his wife. In part, " I am a little lame yet but my health is as good as it has been for a long time. Coleman is at the hospital yet but he is getting better. I think that he will be out again in a few days at longest. Elisha Bisbee is dead. He died last Monday night. I think they said that it was the typhoid fever that he died with. He was not sick but a few days. ...He died very easy-the same as though he was going to sleep. ... It is very rainy and cold tonight. It seems like October. It rains about half of the time now. The niggers say that it will for about a month. There is a lot of them on the island-a number of hundreds of them. ... They want that I should cook and I think that seeing I have cooked so long that I shall keep. ... I want you should number your letters on the lower corner. Begin at 1, then 2, 3, 4 and so on. I will do the same. ...tell him and everybody else that I don't believe a word about Old England fighting us. We have not got paid off yet. They say that the money is on the island to pay us with but I don't know. Write how much money you have got. I sent you 25 dollars. There is any amount of niggers here every day selling oysters-men, women and children. I...They are very nasty looking things and I think that their masters are plagey fools to make the best of them. I shall have to take another sheet of paper. - Gilson"
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