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ASHAEL SUMNER DEAN
CIVIL WAR LETTERS TO
HIS FAMILY
May 24, 1864 Tybee Roads
Miss Annie L. Dean, Foxboro Mass Box 41
Dear Sis,
I have a few minutes left before a mail
leaves us for Port Royal and I will write to let you know I am well, although
the last two letters will go by the same mail. Letters which I wrote sometime
ago. The Pay is going up to Port Royal, 18miles, - we having become tired of
waiting for the mail. We have accounts of our having two mails there from the
North. But soon there will not be so much trouble for more people will be at
this place and more communication with the "Head" - as we call Port Royal.
Yesterday, I went with the Pay & Mr. Sargent up to Fort Pulaski, distant up
the river 2-1/2 miles. We had a fine ride in our "Ward Room Boat, the main
sail flowing full and free", and we were soon there. We had a good deal of
sport going up. We saw a man walking out to sea. He looked as though he was
going to board our vessel. The illusion arose from the fact that the Island
on which the Fort stands sends down the river in a very long low forked beach
or point. The sand was the color of this water and on the same plane with
us. We could look beyond and see water and therefore he had the appearance of
walking out one or two miles over the sea. He was shooting sandpipers. We
went on the Cockspur Island, a low marshy desolate place. A plank road leads
from the dock to the Fort and you see nothing but oats and rushes and
fiddlers. - Thousands of these funny things are on the mud. They look as
irregular as a crab and when they see you they all run for their holes. Then
they peep out and if you come nearer they dodge in again. We looked over the
Fort saw the Rebel guns, looked where it had been perforated with our shot.
Went into a Sutler's Store and there found the Pay & Dr. of the SOUTH
CAROLINA Bought some trifling things and then returned. Annie, bear in mind
that all this while the thermometer was 100 degrees in the shade!
This day a Regiment of Negro troops have
arrived and more are expected and we guess Ironclads will be here before long
and there may be some busy times, but we have to guess at all this. However,
the shooting of an alligator 18 feet long and a shark 12 feet near us on the
Point of Tybee was no guess work though I did not see either. The sharks are
very numerous and we do not draw in seines of fish without taking in young
sharks. It is said a soldier had his leg taken off last summer by one. You
should be here to pick berries. Our boys went yesterday morning and got
quite 12 quarts of the very nicest of berries. Besides, the flowers and beach
Plums are thick. The Plums the size of English Walnuts. Now Annie, I have
hastily written you a busy letter and you must reply at a greater length than
usual. You will let V. hear from me. Give her and the birds very much love
from me and also all the others and be assured that I am ever your bald headed
Brother. As mail will leave New York for Port Royal June 8th, 16th, 23rd and
July 1 and one from here on the same days.
{ ONCE AGAIN, NO CLOSING???
}
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MOON HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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