L.C. Wilder, Confederate soldier, Civil War letter, Prattville, Ala., to, Buckland, Mass., 1864
Description:
This letter, dated 16 March 1864 without an envelope or postage mark, was written by Lorenzo Colburn Wilder (1838-1892). Lorenzo, born in Buckland, Mass., on 5 November 1838 to Gardner and Fidelia (Griswold) Wilder, was living in Prattville, Ala. and working for the Confederates in the Civil War. A digital scan of the original letter was gifted to the Buckland Historical Society by Wilder descendants, along with several other letters, deeds, and miscellaneous documents, which are part of the Society's Wilder Homestead collections. Lorenzo signs his name as "Loren' and "L.C.W.' in the letter written to his father Gardner Wilder (1807-1888) in Buckland, Mass. Gardner and Lorenzo's step-mother, along with several siblings, lived on the original Wilder Homestead, which was built circa 1775. LCW writes that he is "still at work for the government and expect to as long as the war lasts, if it is fifty years....' LCW mentions his conviction to the Confederate cause, his desire to receive letters from his family, his recent marriage to a woman who has several "darkeys,' his grief upon learning of the June 1863 death of his brother Joseph G. Wilder who was in the Union army, and his memories of his mother's death decades earlier on the 29th of March 1847. LCW writes of church, teaching, the costs of room, board, and clothing, his enjoyment of smoking a pipe, and his longing to see his family and his native hills of Western Massachusetts. We can glean from the context of this letter that LCW probably left Buckland to points south in 1859 at the age of 20. U. S. Federal Census records reveal that in June of 1860 LCW was living in Montevallo, Shelby County, Ala. Civil War records show that he enlisted in October 1861 in the Confederate 24th Infantry Regiment, which was organized at Mobile, Ala. just a few months earlier. He remained in the 24th Regiment until his November 1862 discharge due to disability because of chronic rheumatism.LCW stayed in the south the remainder of his life. The new bride he writes about died in Prattville on 24 October 1865. He remarried in November 1866. His first child was born in Ala. in 1868. By 1870 LCW had moved his family to Lockhart, Caldwell County, Tex. where he was a teacher and his second child was born. In 1873 LCW and his family moved to Luling, Caldwell County, Tex. He was one of Luling's original settlers and an early selectman of that town. LCW died in Luling on 25 September 1892 leaving his widow, three daughters, and a son. It was LCW's grandson, Loren Griswold Wilder Jr. (1917-2007) who gifted the circa 1775 Wilder Homestead farmhouse in Buckland, Mass., which had been in the Wilder family for eight generations, to the Buckland Historical Society. The Homestead is open for tours seasonally each year on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of July and August, as well as the Sunday of Columbus Day Weekend each October.