Civil War. Pennsylvania. 11th PA Cav. Letter, 1864

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Offered is a letter on printed unit stationery from William Shmale, Company "D", to his wife in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. The letter is in good condition, four pages with correspondence on all four, with stamped envelope, measures 5 x 8, and is datelined Portsmouth, Virginia, May 7, 1864. SEE SCANS, though note the second scan comes out very poorly, though we tried several times to get a decent one. The letter is actually fairly easy to read, though note that Shmale had someone writing for him, the Michael Wharney who is mentioned in the closing and who adds a sort of P.S. of his own. About half the letter is devoted to family matters, but he also writes, with spelling (every word is capitalized) and punctuation corrected " it is getting warm and we are under marching orders, but which we will go is hard to tell. I have received a fine horse and saber and pistol and a six shooter. At that I am ready for a fight. We have turned in our overcoats and blankets so we have not much on our horses. We are in camp 3 miles from town which is called Portsmouth. I like it very well , if we only had better water to drink. We have plenty of it but it is poor. Our well is not more than 15 feet deep and have water enough for a 100 men and a 100 horses, and another thing we have hard beds to sleep on. I would sleep better at home along side of read more

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