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Feature Article on the Swander brothers. Topic: CIVIL
WAR
Written by Jim Sayre in May, 2000
CIVIL WAR LETTERS REMAIN FROM QUINCY AREA SOLDIER...Pg 2 |
The
morning
It was getting on toward 10 o'clock in the morning and time to move up.
Sayre, the veteran soldier, picked up his rifle as he had so many times before, kicked the
mud, and slogged on up toward the skirmish line. He had new responsibilities now; his
captain, William Sampson, just a few hours ago, had appointed him to be a sergeant
"...in place of one who had forfeited all claims to consideration or position by his
cowardice." It is not hard to imagine that Sayre called to his companions as they
approached the line: "Boys I guess we'd better lay into them now..."This is
how Sayre met his death, not in a famous battle nor in a glorious charge. He just got a
stray bullet in the shoulder while on a muddy skirmish line at a place called Pine Knob,
Georgia. It took him hours to die, and his friends and commanding officer were not present
to console him. They had to keep moving, following a rapidly shifting battle front.
There was very little time for paperwork during this period of prolonged fighting, so
it was a decent thing that Sampson did by writing a caring and informative letter to
William's father within three days of William's death.
Sampson's June 19, 1864, letter to Ziba stated in part:
"It is my painful duty to inform you of the death of your son William, a soldier of
my company. He was mortally wounded about 10 o'clock a.m. of the 16th inst. and during
that night he died at the Division Hospital. He received his wound while on skirmish line
within about 75 yards of the enemy's works and was carried to the rear by several of his
comrades ... Before he was carried off I looked for his wound and found that he was struck
in the right shoulder, the ball passing down into his back. I thought it a very serious
but not a mortal injury and I was surprised to hear the next day that he was dead."
In Quincy
Sometime later, back home near Quincy, Ohio, in a small frame farmhouse,
49-year-old Ziba Sayre, himself a soldier of the 4th Regiment of the Ohio National Guard,
slowly looked up from the dreaded letter he held in his work-worn hands. Then, along with
letters from William that he had saved, he stuffed Captain Sampson's notification into a
small wooden box. Sliding the lid into place, Sayre knew the letters would help him and,
perhaps, other generations of Sayres to remember his son.
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