Home Militaria 1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.
1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.
1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.
1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.
1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.

1864 Civil War Union chaplain letter, City Point VA.

$65.00 CAD

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Letter from a religious person (Chaplain?) based at Union Army hub in City Point Virginia. Letter back to his family, talking about life, his religious works, visiting military hospitals,etc.. 

City Point Oct. 14, 1864
 
Dear Durbin,
 
Yours of the 8th inst arrived night before last & last night the other came....
My health is good, though I have had a slight head ache nearly every day since I have been here. I am very comfortably situated. I lodge in a house, formerly owned and occupied by a rebel I presume. My business in the foremost is mostly to be in the reading room, & fill orders for papers give out reading matter to those who call &c &c. I generally go out to the hospital in the P.M. Wednesday I accompanied Bro. Breckinridge to Bermuda Hundred & visited the hospital there. It is some 3 miles from h(ere). We went up on the Gen. Howard. The Captain was a Methodist. We had a nice time. I called in one tent & found two soldiers. I gave them some papers & commenced talking with them on the subject of religion. One of them commenced weeping immediately. I prayed with them & one slept like a child, & the other when we arose commenced wiping his eyes. Last Sunday night I preached in the Chapel tent & 30 arose for prayers & two were blest. Tuesday night some 10 were forward for prayers & one was blest. Last night 5 or 6 came forward. I enjoy my labors quite well but should enjoy them better if I could spend more of my time with the soldiers.
I received letters from your Ma & Mary. They are well It was the first letter I have received from home since I left. Bro. Breckinridge has just come in, & says he hopes to be in Washington next week.  He is going to the front today, up on the Wildon (?) R.R. …
Your aff. Father

Bermuda Hundred = town outside Richmond Virginia.

4 pages, three written.
Folded for mailing. Small hole UL, affects one word in letter.
7 ⅞" x 5"

City Point (now Hopewell), located in central Virginia at the confluence of the James and Appomattox rivers, was the site of Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant's field headquarters during the Petersburg Campaign at the end of the American Civil War (1861–1865)

But once the Union Army of the Potomac fought its way south to Petersburg late in the spring of 1864, City Point became a crucial Union port and supply hub. At least 100,000 Union troops and 65,000 animals were supplied out of the town. City Point also was the site of the sprawling Depot Field Hospital, which served 29,000 patients.

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