Harpers Ferry Feb 11^th

 

Dear Parents

                        with a willing hand I sit down to write a few lines to you to let you know that we are enjoying usual good health & I hope this may find you the same. The Captain came home yesterday noon having been gone just one week. The large ponton bridge that I saw at Baltimore when I went down there has come here or part of it has at least. about half of the boats and orders have come that we must await further orders before unloading / them but we had got part unloaded of them unloaded and into the canal before the orders came and then the canal managers up and let all the water out of it so we are in a nice box Perhaps the bridge will go back to Baltimore or Washington. I hope so anyway

 

Yesterday another of the new recruits died in the General Hospital. His name was John R Stearnes I guess Pa saw him when he went to the hospital He was buried in the government burying ground The boys would have / sent him home to his friends but they did not have the funds to do it with We put a board with his name and Co marked on it at the head of his grave so that his friends may easily find his body if they choose to. A soldier belonging to the first Maryland Regt was killed down to Sandy Hook by a train of cars. They run over him and took the top of his right off. I have just been reading your letter over of the 6^th which I received day before yesterday and you wished me to write about pants / I think that I have written to you once before that I had drawn a pair of pants so that I am as well off on that score as any one could wish to be I got a little out of patience about it for the Quartermaster kept putting us off all the time or I would not have wrote about it and I did not expect that you would try to send me a pair

 

My little sheet is about filled so I guess I will quit by bidding you an affectionate farewell

 

Yours truly,

Private Cha^s. W. Personeus

U.S. Army

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