Miss Nannie Bostick's Music Book in the Hands of a Federal Soldier.
To the editor of the News and Courier: Will you insert the following in your paper, as it will be of benefit to one of South Carolina's ladies:
If Miss Nannie Bostick will communicate with Captain James B. Rife, Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, she will learn something to her advantage.
I have in my possession a music book which was captured or stolen by some one during the war, and I would like to return it to her if she still lives. By so doing you will greatly oblige,
Yours very truly, Jas. B. Rife,
Late Capt. U. S. A.
Middletown, Dauphin County, Pa.,
January 26, 1889.
The Miss Nannie Bostick above referred to afterwards married Dr. Henry De Saussure, of this city. After his death she was for a long time employed as an instructor at Vassar College, N. Y., and is now a resident of Brooklyn. The home of Colonel Bostick, the father of Mrs. De Saussure, on Black Swamp, in Beaufort (now Hampton) County, was burned by General Sherman's army in the grand "march to the sea."
On reading it I was of course, much excited and wrote immediately to the gentleman in Meadsville, telling him I was the person he was looking for. I waited three weeks most anxiously, and then received a letter from his sister saying that for years her brother had been trying to find me, and that he had something to tell me which was communicated to him by a dying soldier. The sister further wrote that her brother had advertised in New York and Southern papers before, and the cause of his doing so again was that a young niece visiting them, in looking over some old books had come across a music book with my name on it. She went with it into his room, and said, "Uncle, who is Miss Nannie W. Bostick?"
He sprang from his chair exclaiming, "What do you know about her?"
When he learned that she knew nothing and had merely seen my name on the old music book, he said, "I will try once more to find her," and sent off the notice to the News and Courier of Charleston.