1862 October 25 Camp near Winchester

[letter of the Rev. J.C. Granberry, begun on the 24th continues]
Saturday morning.  Have just arisen, and eat my
camp breakfast of beef-hash and butterless biscuit.
Would like for you to see our kitchen and parlor.  rush
heaped up against a rail fence screens us from the wind
a tree cut down is our sofa.  We have one chair, former
ly the property of Gen. Casey, but captured at the Seven Pines.
Sometimes around the blazing fire of that apartment
and sometimes in our chamber we receive our guests.
There is one terrible drawback to the comfort of our fire--the
smoke, blown in all directions by the changing breeze, brings
tears to eyes that were unused to weeping.
  Was disappointed in my hope of a letter from the dearest girl
on  earth to me.  but one will come this evening--the one
you wrote last Monday morning.  I was greatly pleased
last evening by getting a letter from Salem. I had written
about our expected marriage.  Vallie (Mrs. Foley) says she
had suspected something of the sort; was told by Miss Mag
Peyton that I was addressing you; Mrs. Speiden said, not
so, it was certainly Kate Carter.  Vallie and Mrs Massie
express great pleasure in the engagement, had often wished
that I would love and marry again because they know how
lonely and desolate I was believe from all they have seen and
heard that I could not have made a better selection, and that
you are exactly suited to make me happy  they request a visit
from us.  Vallie advises me now to quit the army, as I have a
wife to look after; thinks it will not suit Ella for me to be in the army.
She doesn't know all Ella's self-sacrifice--dies she?  I have scarcely room to

[in top margin of page 1]
say Good-by, my pet and jewel
With all my heart, yours,
J. C. Granberry.

Granberry, University of Virginia chaplain, chaplain of the 11th Virginia was later a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and on the Vanderbilt Board of Trustees.

MSS 4942