1862 June 8 Mechanicsville, Va.

Mechanicsville June 85h 1862
Dear Mother  I will now sit down & pen you A few lines to
Let you know where I am & how I am getting along we have been
at t his place three weeks, day before yesterday as the regiment was returning
from Picket the Regiment was fired into by the Rebel battery but there
was none of the Regiment hurt where we went on Pickett was down
at the Chickahomany Bridge we was so nigh them that we could
speak to them yesterday we was detailed to go and build Cordary
Roads with one Hundred out of the sixteenth New York regiment
the seventh of Maine with the division that they belong to have crossed
the Chickahominy on the Richmond side  I see by the Portland
Advertiser that Edward Clarke has got Home if he has I wish you
tell any of the boys round to tell him that I send my love to
him & hope that I shall see him again with the Regiment & get
them to tell him that his brother dan is well and has been in one Fight at
West Point I have not received but one paper from Father I suppose that
you have heard What General Pope has done, the Regiment was paid off
last Thursday & I sent Father 15  dollars by the paymaster he will take
it to Washington & send it from there by express to him I was bound to
send some this time I am well & hope this will find you the same
I am going over to Georges Regiment to day to see him this will make forty
dollars that I have sent home & shall send ten to Father & five to you the
next time From you Son Joseph Leavitt

Letters from Joseph Leavitt of the 5th Maine and his brother George of the 5th New York were copied into a ledger by their father John Leavitt in October 1865: "because they are of value to me and I was fearful that they might get mislaid." Both boys were mortally wounded in the war, George at Second Bull Run, August 30, 1862, and Joseph at Spotsylvania, May 18, 1864.

MSS 66