New York, July 3, 1861.
My dear Joe: It was a satisfaction to us, at least, to receive your telegram of yesterday morning about half-past four in the afternoon. I was sorry that Eliza could not have seen it before she and Georgy left, at 3 p. m. But she was in good spirits, having received your letter with the account of your strange, safe march “through Baltimore,” “that luke-loyal, flagless city,” as somebody from the Garibaldi Guard, writing to the Post, calls it. By the way, I think your camp and the Babel-camp of the Garibaldians must be near each other, from the accounts. I am glad yours is on that high open ground– a hitherto undefended part of Washington, too, I think. “Camp Woolsey,” has a strange sound to us, there never having been any military association with the name in our family. Naval officers you know we have had, and there is a little village of five houses down at Pensacola named after the Commodore “Woolsey.”[1] I send by this mail some maps for Georgy and Eliza. Carry, Jane and I are living very quietly and miss you all sadly. Mother and Hatty intend to spend the Fourth at Astoria.
Every morning I wake up to bright sunshine and familiar sounds and sights, and think for a second that perhaps all this pageant and preparation of war has been a horrid dream! A busy reality to you I dare say, hardly giving you time to read this or even to remember
Yours affectionately,
A. H. W.
[1] Abby forgets the service during the Colonial wars of Colonel Melancthan Taylor Woolsey (brother of our great-grandfather, Benjamin Woolsey), who, according to the inscription on his tombstone, at Dosoris, L. I., “departed this life 28th of September, 1758, in the service of his country against the French in Canada.”
There was also our great ancestor, Captain George Woolsey, our grandfather’s great-grandfather, who was commissioned Captain in the Burgher Guard of New York, in 1696; and a brother of our great-grandmother, Anne Muirson Woolsey, Heathcote Muirson, a revolutionary soldier, was mortally wounded in an attack by the British on Lloyd’s Neck, L. I., July, 1781.