15 October 1862: “Oh! how many, many such widows this war will make, nay, has already made…”

Item description: Entry, 15 October 1862, from the diary of Sarah Lois Wadley.

More about Sarah Lois Wadley:
Sarah Lois Wadley was born in 1844 in New Hampshire, the daughter of railroad superintendent William Morrill Wadley (1813-1882) and Rebecca Barnard Everingham Wadley (1819-1905). Although born in New England, she appears to have been raised in the South, and lived with her family in homes near Amite in Tangipahoa Parish, Monroe and Oakland in Ouachita Parish, La., and near Macon, Ga. Sarah Lois Wadley died unmarried in Monroe County, Ga., in 1920.

[Transcription available below images.]

Item citation: From the Sarah Lois Wadley Papers, #1258Southern Historical Collection,Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Item transcription:

Wednesday, Oct. 15th–

Father left us yesterday evening to be absent a whole month, how long the time seems! he is gone to Georgia.

We have a poor woman staying here tonight for whom my heart bleeds, she went down to the camps on horseback with her baby, only seven months old; to nurse her husband, when she arrived there this morning she found him dead and buried. She is now on her way back to her sad home. She is a very young woman, apparently quite poor, and has no parents living, as I hear her deep and frequent sighs from the adjoining room I can only pity her and be grateful for all the blessings that surround me. Oh! how many, many such widows this war will make, nay, has already made; scarcely a family but has lost one member.

Willie has not been very well today and yesterday, Saturday he took a ride of thirty miles after some oxen, and again Monday, since then, he has been very tired.

Mrs. Young has a baby boy, born today.

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