A Letter from William Edward Chapman to His Father in 1862

When he was still a high school student, William Edward Chapman, known as Ed, wrote to his father, William Pendleton Chapman. A transcription of the first page of the letter is below:

April 11, 1862

Dear Father,

I received your letter of the 17th yesterday noon. In the afternoon I saw W.T. Williams and he said he would ship the provisions at 40 cents per hundred 10 cents per hundred cheaper than he did the others. The Portsmouth arrived that same afternoon and this afternoon we loaded the provisions. I got the insurance on it just now, paid $5.04. I also got G.J. Anderson to insure the $3000 on the provisions in Keech’s building, paid $3.75 for insuring that. The Sandusky Gas Light Co. have declared a dividend & they gave me a check on Moss Brothers, so I went and got the money and paid for these things instead of taking it out of the drawer. The girl has left: she is going to be married next Monday. She found us another girl though.

Poor Henry Barney is dead! He died from the effects of his wound at Pittsburgh Landing. He died in the hospital at Louisville on last Friday night between 10 & 11 o’clock. His mother was with him. His remains were brought home last night & he was buried with military honors this afternoon.

It’s about as sorrowful a time here as I ever knew. He was buried from the Church. Dr. Bronson preached a funeral

[The second page of the letter continued:]

sermon. Henry fought all day Thursday & Friday, rested Saturday, & then fought Sunday & Monday till 2 o’clock in the afternoon. He was lying on his back loading, with his knee elevated, when a bullet struck him below the knee, hit the bone & shattered his knee all to pieces. It is thought, if it had been amputated on the field, his life could have been saved, but he kept sinking lower & lower & after it was dressed the last time he fell right away & died that night. He said before he died that he had seen enough of war. If anyone that passed through those days might well say so. It seems hard to be shot nearly the last thing. Olds had a narrow escape. A ball went through his cap & bruised his head without hurting him. Everybody feels as bad nearly as if they lost a brother. I can’t realize that it is so.

Yours affectionately,

Ed

William Edward Chapman worked as a clerk in the freight office of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad. Later he worked for the Erie Railway at Dunkirk, New York. He moved back to Sandusky for a time, and in the 1890s he and his wife and children moved to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where he worked successfully in the lake transportation business.

William Edward Chapman died in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was buried at Sandusky’s Oakland Cemetery next to his wife, the former Julia Mills. The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center is fortunate to have a series of nineteenth century letters written to and from members of the Chapman and Pendleton families. These letters help us to more clearly understand the daily lives of early settlers of Erie County, Ohio. William Edward Chapman’s letter poignantly shows the sadness that is experienced when someone loses a loved one to war injuries.