Scranton, Pennsylvania ,July 8, 1862, Dear Husband...

(Mary Nyhart Moyer, age 25)
Scranton, Pennsylvania
July 8,1862

(Private Stephen J Moyer, age 29
Company A, 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers,
then on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina)

Dear Husband,

I have now sat down to answer your letter that I received on the seventh, and it found us all well but Elle (age 14 months), who is not very well. She has the summer complaint (diarrhea) very bad, however I am very glad that you are well again. I have been very uneasy about you these few weeks when I heard that you left Key West, Florida, and I am afraid that you will come to battle at Richmond (Lee had defeated McClellan there in June), but if you will I hope that there is one mightier there who will keep you from danger so you can return to us again.

I have not received that box yet, and will let you know as soon as I get it. I have written two letters to you since I received the last one from Key West. I wrote one letter on the 26th and one on the 29th of last month and I enclosed three stamps in the last one. I would send you some with this letter, but I can’t go to town to buy more. But I will write again before long, and then I will send you some. Try and get a furlough and come home once more to see us. You are gone six months already and how many more you will be gone no one can tell, dear Stephen. I hope that this war will not last very long so you can soon come home, but if it is as (illegible; possibly Israel, Stephen’s BIL) tells to all in Scranton, you will not come then. He has said that you told him only two days before you went off that you would get rid of me one way or the other; that you was going to war and then you was rid of me but I will not believe him that you said it. He makes us all feel as low as he can. Rebecca (possibly Stephen’s sister) is going to leave him this week. He is so ugly to her and the children that she can’t stand it anymore with him.

Frank (age 4) is not at home these two weeks. He is up at Lydia’s (sister Lydia Nyhart Smalser’s farm at Lake Winola with her husband and four children ages 2-8) and will be very glad when we get that money that you sent to have our likeness (photograph) taken to send to you. (Below) Then I want you send me yours so I can see how you look in your soldier clothes.

Oh, you do not know how bad I want to see you. I do not see how you can stay away. Oh dear Stephen, there is no night that I lay my troubled head on my pillow that I do not wish you lay in that bed too, and think of these tears that I have shed since you are gone. Oh Stephen, I do not believe that there is another such young person in the world who has had as much trouble as I have had since you are gone. I hope that the trouble will soon be at an end. I have worked for days at hoeing corn and potatoes and we are going to commence haying next week. It will help, but I can’t hardly stand it but I must dear Stephen. I want you to tell me whose likeness it was that you sent to me; and that ring was too small for Frank, and Elle had it on her finger and broke it.

Dear Stephen write as often as you can. I will get you some stamps and send them to you and then write to me every week. I will, too. And now I will close for this time. No more from your true and faithful wife,


Mary B Moyer to Stephen J Moyer


PS
Excuse all bad writing and spelling, for the tears come too freely to write good. Now goodbye until I can see you kiss this spot for your wife and children. Come home, oh come home once more.

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/.../402778093.jpg

So, did he come back OK, or did he not make it?

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…BTW, I had not realized that "summer complaint" was other than a colloquialism limited to the mountain people of West Virginia. (Juice of blackberries was the traditional remedy.)

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The malady was actually cholera to one degree or another, caused by drinking water growing pestilence in warm weather.

It's interesting that this young wife had a jerk of a brother-in-law harassing her, and a severely ill child while she was coping with running the farm all by herself. And probably very little money, to boot. At least she had some help getting in the hay. One can't blame her for unloading a bit.

Nor did tough times end for Mary quickly. Private Stephen Moyer didn’t return home to stay until two and a half years later in January, 1865. He fought on the coastal islands of Carolina, Georgia and Florida, captured Jacksonville, and fought in Louisiana and in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign. His infantry regiment lost 290 killed or dead of disease out of a strength of around 1650 men. Stephen had been trained as a gunmaker in Tannersville, but as mass production drove small gunmakers out of business, he went to work for the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company before going off to war. Stephen and Mary went on to prosper, having a total of fifteen children, all of whom who reached adulthood also becoming successful. The family farmed for a time near my GGParents in Wyoming County, then as Stephen got older he returned to Scranton to work for the railroad.

Young Frank M Moyer, age 4, who was off visiting my GGmother’s farm (and standing so proudly by his mother in that wartime photo as the man in the family) would become one of Scranton’s leading building contractors with works that included the Anthracite Hotel and the Ontario and Western Train Depot, employing over a hundred men.

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/.../402797830.jpg

Last, Stephen’s sister Rebecca eventually did leave her jerk of a husband, as that family can’t be found intact after the 1860 Census. In 1870, Rebecca’s children were living with their aunt and her husband, a Breaker Boss for a coal company, in Scranton.

hmmm..., I wonder if I'm related?

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Originally Posted by Rick Moyer

hmmm..., I wonder if I'm related?

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Perhaps.

These are the Moyers who originated in Northampton County after immigration. There are other Moyer settlers originating in Berks, and another group in Dauphin.

If it's Northampton, I can probably track your line. But Moyer Myer and Meyer are common surnames so it can be difficult.

Ah, the art of letter writing seems to have gone the way of the Labrador Duck. So sad.

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Originally Posted by Bob Smalser

Perhaps.

These are the Moyers who originated in Northampton County after immigration. There are other Moyer settlers originating in Berks, and another group in Dauphin.

If it's Northampton, I can probably track your line. But Moyer Myer and Meyer are common surnames so it can be difficult.

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Many family histories are hard to trace because of the multitude of spellings. Far too many were illiterate, and didn't know how to spell their last names. Thus they were written to many different spellings at behest of the writer.

History texts cannot hold a candle to a letter from a wife to her husband (especially during wartime).

These first-person accounts of the [hard] times (and perseverance) are priceless. More of them should be collected and shared with school-aged children. They're captivating and tell a story in a haunting voice that will not soon be forgotten.

Thank you for sharing.

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Originally Posted by Kevin W Johnson

Many family histories are hard to trace because of the multitude of spellings. Far too many were illiterate, and didn't know how to spell their last names. Thus they were written to many different spellings at behest of the writer.

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Attending high school only became common in rural Pennsylvania in the 1900's. Before that an 8th-grade education was pretty standard for farmers. Mary Barbara Moyer had an 8th-grade education in Kellersville, Monroe County in the 1840's. From her sentence structure, much of which I changed to make the letter readable, her school may even have been taught in German. Her family's first language at home was certainly still German, and for many Reformed and Lutheran Pennsylvania-German families remained so until the First World War.

Her sister, my great grandmother, married a German immigrant in 1855 who didn't speak a word of English when he arrived, and one of their sons, my grandfather, also married a German immigrant in 1904, and she didn't speak a word of English upon arrival. Hence my grandfather born in 1880 also could speak German, although I'm certain his 8th-grade education was in English.

So it's a bit odd to hear their descendants criticize recent immigrants for their lack of English skills. Mary's family immigrated in 1737 and spoke German as their household language until around 1917.

But an 8th-grade education is hardly illiterate, and contrary to derisive comments by Pennsylvania's Anglican and Quaker elite at the time, the Rhineland farmers who immigrated in large numbers from the 1730's to the 1750's could largely read, write and cipher. Spelling wasn't considered as important then as now, and surname spellings were often changed during one's lifetime to differentiate between families, as they were Pietists all named after the same half-dozen saints. For the same reason, middle names were often used as spoken names, and one 18th-Century gunmaker in the family signed rifles using three different surname spellings in his lifetime, with a fourth spelling on his tombstone.

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Originally Posted by Bob Smalser

So it's a bit odd to hear their descendants criticize recent immigrants for their lack of English skills.

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Criticizing for lack of English skills upon arrival? Or lack of learning afterwards? I can understand the former, although personally if I were were to pull up roots and move, I'd make sure I had some language skills to match my new destination. The latter, I will admit bugs me as well and makes no sense to me. We have a sizeable spanish population (among others) in my area, who's kids are learning English in our schools. The parents have the perfect opportunity to pick up english from their children, but it seems a great many don't make that effort. Assimilation is impossible without communication. A great number of the one that do speak and understand english, tend to get amnesia when it's convenient.

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Originally Posted by Bob Smalser

But an 8th-grade education is hardly illiterate, and contrary to derisive comments by Pennsylvania's Anglican and Quaker elite at the time, the Rhineland farmers who immigrated in large numbers from the 1730's to the 1750's could largely read, write and cipher. Spelling wasn't considered as important then as now, and surname spellings were often changed during one's lifetime to differentiate between families, as they were Pietists all named after the same half-dozen saints. For the same reason, middle names were often used as spoken names, and one 18th-Century gunmaker in the family signed rifles using three different surname spellings in his lifetime, with a fourth spelling on his tombstone.

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Sorry, I didn't make the distinction of illiteracy at time of arrival to this country, which is what I was refering too. There were many that were illiterate upon arrival to this land. Even as late as 1900, 70 percent of southern Italy was illiterate, compared to about 7 percent in England, France, or Germany. Although I haven't read what the immigrant illiteracy rates were for these countries. In the 1800's, many of the Polish immigrants were both illiterate and unskilled. Many of the Irish at this time were illiterate as well. And even as late as 1906, 28 percent of all immigrants, at time of arrival were illiterate.

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Originally Posted by Kevin W Johnson

if I were were to pull up roots and move, I'd make sure I had some language skills to match my new destination.

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I would make two points. One is that if you were moving to another place, to a community where everyone spoke your language, you would have language skills to match your new destination. When my great-grandparents came from the Netherlands, everyone in the the town in Iowa they came to spoke Dutch. They got along fine. English didn't become the "house language" until WWII. This was generally true for all of my ancestral lines. It's human nature.

The second is that people who are living happy lives don't generally leave to move halfway around the world and leave all their lifelong friends and relatives behind, and they did not necessarily have a lot of time to make a decision. A lot of people who came here were getting away from something, or had to leave for some other reason. Two lines of my ancestors left the Netherlands because of religious persecution. They refused to pay a tax to support a state church they did not believe in, or to have their marriages performed in the state churches. If they had stayed a few more weeks, they would have been imprisoned. They had to get out. So their choice was "any where else". They considered Texas, Iowa, Argentina, and Borneo because they could homestead large tracts of land in those places. Another great grandfather left because of a "civil problem", which translates to bankruptcy. The fourth line left the Netherlands to join their relatives who were already here, and because they could buy farmland. But the point is that there was really no where they could go where Dutch was the national language. They did however find places where people who spoke Dutch lived. That's they way it usually went.

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Originally Posted by Phil Thien

History texts cannot hold a candle to a letter from a wife to her husband (especially during wartime).

These first-person accounts of the [hard] times (and perseverance) are priceless. More of them should be collected and shared with school-aged children. They're captivating and tell a story in a haunting voice that will not soon be forgotten.

Thank you for sharing.

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+1.

In today's world of instant communication it's hard to fathom not knowing if a loved one is dead or alive for months on end.

Hilton Head at that time was nothing more than an insect infested pile of sand and scrub. If you have not experienced sand gnats, be thankful. It was surely a very miserable time for the soldiers there.