Statewide County MsArchives Photo Person.....Sharkey, Henry Clay 
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Pattie Snowball http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00017.html#0004072 October 11, 2007, 1:32 pm

Source:             Unavailable
Name:               Henry Clay Sharkey
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Glen Allen, Miss.
Sept.17, 1925

Dear Mrs. Gillespie
  Your letter received.  While you were off on the hunt of health on the 
salubrious clime of Tenn.  I visited Raymond and saw the mayor of your city 
and he and Miss Mary Ratliff and I placed the marker in the negro cemetery 
near the road in the N-side in plain view of the road.  I saw your son and he 
said you were not at home.  I am now satisfied that it will stand as long as I 
live – and no one after me will know the service Old Jerry was to the 
Confederacy – or his master.  I read in the Veteran of you duties with the 
UDCs.  I do not expect to be at the fair, nor will I be at Meridian – unless I 
am needed to further a matter I have at heart and every Mississippian should 
feel to honor the name of Charlie Read – who shed honor on our State as he did 
on the weak Confederate Navy – with the Alabama, our most gallant vessel.  His 
widow, now an old feeble woman, might wish to come to Beauvoir, the last home 
of Jefferson Davis, and to the State of Miss. to die – among the people who 
knew her and her gallant husband in the days of her youth.  I sent the letter 
to Mrs. Kimbrough the Chairwoman of the Directors of Beauvoir and asked that 
she be admitted to the Home and to have the UCVs UDCs & Sons of Vets to 
endorse the action of the Board at the reunion at Meridian.  She will no doubt 
do this – but I have not yet heard from her.  Charlie Read lived and died a 
Miss. and while the rule is not to admit anyone to the Home but citizens of 
Miss. – His widow for her health and the health of her daughter now are 
domiciled in Calif.  Charlie was older than I – both raised near Brownsville – 
and his younger brother and I were schoolmates.  Poor Joe.  Lost his leg at 
the battle of Spring Hill, Tenn. – 1864 and was raised in Hinds Co.  Capt. P_ 
_ Shearer and Andy Vaughn were members of that Company.  No better soldier 
entered the Confederate Army – and no greater Naval Officer than Charlie Reed 
and Joe Read would add luster to the heroism of the Confederate soldier of 
Mss. and of Hinds County – I am both a UCV & UDC and have neglected my duties 
to the Reads of Queens Hill neighborhood.
Regards to friends. Your Friend,  Clay Sharkey.

P.S. I went to see Bill Montgomery while in Hinds and I fear he cannot 
recover – he and I are near the same age, only 11 days difference – Bill was a 
true boy.
A true man, and if he has an enemy, God pity the man who harbers malice 
against the most generous, kind and hospital man I ever knew – Such men cannot 
well be spared, as examples are better than precepts for our children.

While Bill and I so offen differed in politics – never for one moment did our 
friendship ever waver – So if friendship cannot be broken by politics it will 
last forever – Tell Miss Mary Ratliff that Mrs. Reed referred to the Ratliff 
family in her letter to me. 

Clay Sharkey



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