OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - The James Perry Fyffe Letters (Civil War) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darrold Crites DCrites642@aol.com July 16, 1997 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TO: (No Envelope was shown) Head Quarter 59th Rgt O.V. Louisa KY Nov 20th 1861 My own Willa Tired and worried having just come in from a 20 mile march over the mountains. I set down in a house with the advantage of table, paper, pen & ink to address you. I recd one letter from you at Camp Crittenden one nite below Prestonburg after our return from Pikeville after the Battle and it was like mana to a starving Travellor on a Desert Waste who is worn down with hunger & thirst. It was the first and only letter I have received. If you could have seen us when we came back from the battle to where we had left our tents (our houses we call them), weary worn & dirty, you would have said we were a hard looking set. Part of the time it rained and we had no tents. The morning after the battle it rained and kept raining. The men marched on through rain, mud and mire and we were ordered to camp on a high mountain -------. Not liking to camp with a height still above me overlooking my men, I climbed clear up to the top, where it was wooded, so that a hostile force could not get above me. Here we lay and it was cold, the region being so elevated. That night, sleeping with a log at my feet to keep me from slipping down the hill, the fire which I had built at one end of the log ran along it and set my bed on fire and the heel of my left boot was burned off and I was awakened by the heat, and found my bed clothes on fire. A hole was burned in my quilt, but what vexed me more than anything else, the nice comfort you made for me also had a hole in it. But enough of this. We are on our way to Cin, perhaps to go to Lexington, KY. We will take boats and go down the River and maybe I will get to see you. Who knows? Ah! Would not I like to see Willa? I rather think so. So, you are getting along famously, keeping Bachellors Hall. I have a notion to get on my old pants and come to see you. That would be Romantic. But if you had been with Mrs Col Harris and Capt Hawkly Wife and travelled over those Mountains, you would not have found anything very Romantic about it but much of ------- -------. I must close as supper will soon be ready. Any think of setting at a table, eating off plates like christian people. "Snowball" my --------------- is Blackening my boots, what is left of them Good by my Dear own wife Perry