Uncle John and I sat up nearly all night, and he certainly told me some very interesting things about the Hoyts and Deweys, and many incidents of you in your childhood days, when you lived in Rochester, before you came to Pine Hill. He says the childhood home of Grandfather Hoyt was at Hudson, on the Hudson River, and that his family came from Danbury, Connecticut. Grandmother Hoyt was a Dewey from Ohio, and her father was from Watertown, N. Y., whose ancestors sprang from the Herkimer County Mohawk Dutch.
Now, why can't we claim a connecting link, for we all know that my great grandfather, John Richardson's brother, Gershom, moved from Stafford, Connecticut, to Watertown, N. Y., and I have heard father say that he, Warren Richardson, my grandfather, with some other men, walked up to Watertown one winter, over 300 miles, and staid a month or so with their cousins. They were a large family.
NORTH SHORE, LOON LAKE, WINONA GROVE.
I wish Uncle John lived where I could see him often. He is so full of information on all subjects, that I just love to talk with him. It made me laugh when he told me about how you, Ellen Wilder, Mary Robe and Mary Raymond, actually carried old Pine Hill by storm several winters.
Then he got to talking about the war and I really cried when he described the battle of Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. Just think of it, four brothers—John, Sylvester, and the twins, Edwin and Edward—standing there at daylight waiting for the order to charge the enemy's breast works. Uncle John said that they all thought it meant death. Colonel Porter must have been a brave man; he stood in front and said, "Boys, this is our last charge, but we are going to obey orders." He unwisely wore his uniform in leading; Uncle John said that he hadn't gone thirty feet before he was pierced with seven or eight bullets.
Uncle John was captured and sent to Salisbury prison for nearly two years. When he came out his mother said he looked like a monkey. He only weighed seventy-nine pounds. Sylvester was shot in the thigh, Edwin was shot through the lungs, and poor Edward; we have never heard from him. Wasn't that an awful price for your family to pay for the Union? Uncle said "that from 1,900 of us boys of that 22d New York Heavy Artillery, over 600 were killed in half an hour, and at the next roll call at Reams Station, only nineteen men of the regiment answered the call."
Well, I can't write any more. Walton has already gone to bed and we have got to start at four o'clock tomorrow morning. We expect to visit Uncle Sherman at Rochester tomorrow. We are in the best of spirits, and the way we have been going so far we ought to make Connecticut in about twelve or thirteen days from Chicago.