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South Carolina C.S.A.
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South Carolina C.S.A. |
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Company G Sixteenth South Carolina |
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macon ga. aug 22ond 1864 mrs. hester, mam, it is with regret that i have to inform you of the death of your husband wm. hester. i am on my way to camp and having to stop here a day or two on account of the road being tore up. i went to the stout hospital to see if i could find any of my company and looking over the records i found your husband died friday the 19th. i got all the information about him that i could he died with cronic diarhear. they said he did not talk any hardly for a day or two before he died. he only desired to come home he died very easay. he was decently buried in a good coffin. he left a coat a pair of pants pair of shoes and a hat. i would send them to you if i had a chance but i have no chance at all to send them to you. he had nine dollars in his pocketbook. i have got it and his pocketknife and pocket handkerchief which i will try to keep untill i have a chance to send them to you. i have given you all the information i could get concerning his death. i cannot help but sympathive with you in the loss of your husband for he was a good and true soldier always ready and willing to discharge his duty in the defence of his country. your humble servant lt. e.h. bates |
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Lt. Esley Bates would write many such letters to Travelers Rest in the coming months. Private Hester would not be alone. Easley Bates would come home after the war with these memories intact and a thousand others we shall never know. He would be a very different man from the one who brought the gun to his friend Lieutenant Benson at Adams Run. He would live a long and productive life and numbered with the things he would accomplish would be founding a Masonic Lodge in Easley, South Carolina. Every minute of every day with every breath he would remember what he was allowed to do... that men like Private Hester were not. His wife would have the husband and concern and help that Louisa would not... the war, this war changed the face of the land and the people in it in many ways, no way was more profound than the prescence of the empty chairs... by the hundreds of thousands... one huge common grave from Virginia to Texas. Steve, I will write this down exactly like the letter in the Hester Family History, that my cousin, Catherine Hester Brockman compiled. This is a copy of a letter written to Louisa Whitmire Hester telling her of the death of her husband, William Hester, who was serving in the War Between the States. Ann Hester, who has the original copy, copied this for me, using the same spelling and punctuation that was used in the original copy. Janette E-Mail Descendant |
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