The Lilac Bush Is Blooming Read online

  We march to Washington tomorrow from Elmira as the sun comes up. I have been chosen as cook by popular vote. Charlie Graham was chosen as my helper. He’s a lazy sort, so I hope he perks up. Over a hundred men to feed.

  Your Loving Husband

  John Thompkins

  January 1862—So my dear wife this is the last time I shall write you from Elmira. I am well at present and am hoping that you and the rest of the folks are the same. I want you to kiss the children and tell them I go south on Tuesday at 5 o’ clock in the afternoon. We have got our guns they are the mini rifle they are nice guns. I sent you one dollar instead of two I left a half dollar for Mother with James and I lent a boy a half and we will pay it to you.

  We shall go to Washington. I would like to see you well. You must be a faithful wife to the small ones as I shall be a good ways off through this. Tell Alfie I want that he should write me. My love to all and I want that you should write often as this is from your affectionate husband.

  John Thompkins

  January 16, 1862—Washington D.C. I will write a few lines to you. I am well and I hope these few lines will find you and Mother and my children well and all of the folks. I want you to send to Turner’s shop and get my broad ax if you can and tell me how the coroners verdict turned out in the case of Caleb Brown. I would like to see you. I could tell some stories that I have fared well. The captain thinks a good deal of me and so do all the boys. I got four United notes of ten dollars each they will help you some time. The news is I have two new cooks in the place of Graham he got lazy and some boys reported him and the captain wrote him a discharge. I am glad of the change. There was a death in Company G next to us. He was brought through the regiment in the hearse in the military style of arms. I saw the procession it was the first I ever saw in my life. He was a stranger to me. There was a small battle a few day ago the rebels lost 400 hogs and some men and arms. All troops is to make a grand rush this month the south must go down or the honor of the north is gone. I must close my letter as the hour of eleven has come and the lights have been ordered out a good while ago.

  Yours truly

  affectionate husband to wife and

  mother and children

  John Thompkins

  I will send you a gold dollar in this.

  April 18, 1862—Today I am on camp guard. It is two hours on and six off. I have been thinking what was best for you to do. I want you to go and look to the worms on the apple trees and not let them hurt them. I hope that you have bought the old farm for we needed it to make us a happier situation then we can have all the pasture and a good place to raise all kinds of grain and corn.

  I don’t want you to suffer nor the rest of the family. I will have one hundred and fifty dollars due me and 16 dollars per month and the rest of my bounty. I like it here very well the water is good but the fare is hard. I have coffee and hard tack and some sugar. The meat rations are small. If only I had what we had thrown away but we can’t carry it. The ground is covered with cotton blowing around here.

  I would like to be there with you today but the time passes off. I want you to be as saving as you can this is full of love.

  John Thompkins

  August 13, 1862—Camden St. House—US General Hospital— Baltimore Maryland

  My dear wife,

  I set myself to write a few lines to you. I feel some better today. I have been quite sick since I wrote to you. I have had diarrhea. It has taken many men from us about twelve a week I have seen them die all around me. I am better now I can walk some. I can’t get downstairs yet. I can’t get a chance to see my family. I can’t get the thought from my mind what I shall do. I hope that the Lord will bless all our efforts to help us in all our labors. My heart is with you and I can’t forget you when the troubles pass over me. What will become of the one of my choice and the sweet children. I intend to do all that I can for you and all the folks. I feel lonesome to stay here and not see anyone that I ever have seen. Will close with my love to all and kiss the little ones.

  John Thompkins

  November 1, 1862—Camden St.—U.S. General Hospital— Baltimore Maryland

  My dear wife,

  I hope that these few lines will find you well although I am in poorer circumstances. The Doc thinks I will fever again. I lay on my back and write this. I am in the same hospital I was in in August. Six or seven hundred of us wounded in the battle of Antietam. I have found some old friends here. I hope that this war will come to a close so that all the hurt can get home. I hope that you will not forget me. I could try to get discharged but I would lose my pay and bounty so I thought I better wait a spell. Write the news and tell me how you and your folks are getting along.

  This is from your ever thoughtful

  lover and husband John Thompkins to

  his wife and children.

  November 18, 1862—U.S. General Hospital—Baltimore

  My ever beloved wife,

  Still will I write to you though I have not heard from you since the 17 of September. I hope that you have not forgotten me altogether. I feel some better now but the chance is small for me to get home but still I hope for the better. I am well treated here but still it is not home. I feel that I would like the comforts of my family and well would you like the one there would stand by you in hours of affliction. I for my part can say so for one word has oftimes cheered and revived my energies. It has pleased God to spare me for some humble purpose. I want to see my children and all folks near to me.

  Kiss the children for me and tell them their father has not forgotten them. Learn them the things that are good for them and beneficial to their education. My love to you and all the rest of the folks from your ever loving and faithful husband to his dear wife and children.

  John Thompkins

  November 21, 1864 Chapen Farm, Virginia

  My ever beloved wife,

  I am well and my hand is almost well now too. I hope your father will come to Springwater and see you. If I can’t come it will be some comfort to you to see your father and mother. I would like to be there to see them before they go west. This war is hard for me to bear and I hope it will come to a settlement soon as it can for I am tired of this southern soil. I can’t help thinking how us boys has been used in the 28th battery. I hope that justice may be done us yet as it has been done to others. I got back and our quarters were all gone but the ground was left and stumps. Our regiment was moved to the rear of the old place some fifty rods. The Rebs make a dash to our left but it is short. I heard the firing it was five or six miles from here. It rains all the time now. I thought that the news of the president filled all the hearts of the north with a remorse of hatred to the offending murderer. It has been a sad blow. I am in sight of the Insane Institution that is a large stone building of immense size there is about 180 in it men and women. I have heard some of them talk there is a droll feeling in them they are mostly very smart as the war has made them so.

  John Thompkins

  November 1864

  My dear wife,

  I am so glad the fighting is done and Lee has surrendered to the union forces and that all we hope is the laying down of their arms and that lasting peace will be the issue of the Rebellion. I feel for my part that home suits me better than all wars and their triumphs. It will be a joyous time when all the lovers of homes and families arrive there.

  I was weighed the other day in a grist mill. I weighed 165. I have got some Indian meal. It is hard to get in this town. There are patrols there from two brigades. I hope that the state convention will adopt all that the government wants. It seems that the situation of this place is in destitute conditions as they have nothing to eat and all their teams have been taken from them either by the Rebels or by our force. It is hard for them. We lay in a corn field. The fences are burned and all of the outhouses. All the boards we can get are used for our tents and our quarters.

  Tell Alfie he must be a good boy and when I come home I will fetch him something nice. I wish I was there t
o help him with the woodpile.

  All my love to you all and kiss the children for me.

  Your ever loving husband

  John Thompkins

  April 29th, 1865 North Carolina

  My Ever Beloved Wife,

  I will drop a few lines to you hoping that this will find you and mine well. I am well now. I have had a long march to get here. It made me feel rather old. I had the diarrhea some but well from it now. There has come an order to the regiment to put the state flag at half mast and fire a gun once in each half hour for thirty days for the loss of the chief magistrate and President of the Union. We heard of it three days after the occurrence. Booth must have been one of the greatest rascals in the wide world he and the gang of these desperados. It seems that the conspiracy has been in view for some time. I hope that they may be caught and be brought to justice. I think that this trouble would be settled by him in regard to the south better than anyone else but Mr. Johnson I think will come right to the point to them and all of the men found in arms against the Government will be treated as outlaws and rebels. Most of the citizens of this place feel thankful to come back to the old government they like the old flag and I trust will fight for the same. I hope that the tidings of peace will be published soon and all of the North and South may be united together in one circle of peace so that we all may be friends and bury the hatchet and that it will make us a happy and independent nation. May the blood that has been shed be wiped away.

  It seems that as we are to guard the city of Raleigh we will lay here till we are sent north. We are drilled hard now for some purpose. It was a hard voyage. I hope we will be sent north but I can’t say if we will be sent there or not. I have some boys here from Cohocton Elbert Anderson he says his wife will come see you some time but I can’t say how soon. I hope that you can get plenty of wood and hay and meat and grain till I come back to you. If you go to the valley go and see James Ashton he can tell you about trade he will give you all the information you need concerning the business. If the fences will do then let them be until I come back. If you can help some in letting out the place to sow or pasture do as you think best.

  My love to all.

  John Thompkins

  Your Husband and Friend in all trials

  and affairs

  Please send me a newspaper.

  The following was written in Granny’s beautiful hand.

  NOTE: Great Uncle John returned home in June 1865. He and his wife Abigail had four more children. In her diary the second child Caroline noted his passing as follows. “Papa died peacefully in his sleep on August 10, 1897. We had been with him the day before while he sat in a rocking chair and we talked.”

  In 1945 Papa and I traveled to Horseheads to attend a family reunion at Aunt Lydia’s farm. We had a gay time. We set up the barn for square dance and Aunt Lydia’s husband Uncle George was the caller. Aunt Lydia made her prize winning rhubarb pie and I brought the potato salad with the sweet pickles in it you girls always loved. Chester, Aunt Lydia’s nephew, dug a pit by the pond and we toasted marshmallows under the evening stars and sang all the silly songs we ever remembered. There were almost four hundred people who traveled to be there that year. Over a hundred were direct descendants of Great Uncle John.

  I closed the journal a lot more softly than I had opened it surprising myself with a gentleness I didn’t know I had in me. It was eerie to look that closely into someone’s life, especially someone who was no longer here. But, it was exciting as well. There were ghosts alright in this house, just as I had always suspected, but they were not the kind I had thought. The spirits of our ancestors were here in these journals and somehow I knew they were watching over us.

  Mama had always said we come from strong stock. The answers to the mysteries of my ancestry lay in that pile of journals tied up so neatly with a thick red bow and laid so carefully on the old, rotting floor boards. My frolics with Will and Georgie would have to take a back seat to the summer reading I now laid out for myself. I tiptoed down the narrow, winding staircase that had been creaky since I was born, stepping carefully on the treads I knew were the quietest, and headed for the kitchen to see if Mama could use some help with supper.

  Chapter Five

  Fall came all too soon. Mama liked her kids at home and not one of us was keen on hitting the books again, especially when nature was treating us to one of the most beautiful autumns ever. The leaves on the Maple trees and the Sycamores behind the barn and down by the creek were turning the most brilliant shades of red and orange, and the yellows and rusts seemed the most vibrant of any year. The soft breezes that ran through them and rustled their leaves ever so gently were still balmy, giving the promise of a fairly lengthy Indian summer.

  The barn cats chased the small critters in the hayloft and toyed with Jester when he arrived with Will. But, Jester soon learned to stand his ground, and chased them under the porch when they got too frisky.

  Once again, we were back at Baldwinsville Central. Though the janitorial staff had scrubbed the walls and the floors with ammonia, we could still smell the sweat drops from dazed and confused students attempting to answer questions like what year did the Revolutionary War end or where was Napoleon exiled in the sweltering heat of June exams. Or, so we thought.

  The walls were still the same drab tan they had been since I had attended, painted with the thinnest coat of oil paint the staff could find. We still had cloak rooms with blackboards where countless students through the ages had attempted to answer math problems that seemed to have no answer.

  It’s not that I minded being back in school. I liked the girls, especially the ones from our village of Pottersville, which was in the township of Mayberry. Some of the Mayberry girls were stuck-up, and shunned us with their cliques, but others tried to invite us for sleepovers to see how the other half lived.

  Carrie was particularly moody. Jamie had left for New York a few days before the school year began and their idyllic summer days had come abruptly to an end. Mama found lots of chores for her and insisted she finish her homework. But, Mama was not without heart. She took Carrie to Russell’s apothecary in town to pick out a bottle of nail polish to save for special holidays and she added a letter box with the most beautiful stationary we had ever seen, all done up with Carrie’s favorite, red roses, with ribbons and lace along the border and even inside the envelope.

  Georgie and I were beside ourselves trying to perk Carrie up. I offered to make her bed every day for the next four weeks and Georgie even offered her his very special stuffed giraffe on loan for at least two weeks but nothing worked. She continued to moon about.

  As the leaves dropped from the trees in droves, and settled about the ground, scattering with every puff of wind, I lured Carrie out into the back pasture overlooking the meadow that every spring and summer produced the palest yellow of the wild primroses, flocks of white daisies, lavender violets and tall, lean spires of bluebells. Despite the brownish grasses moving in, the meadow still sported a number of golden yellow buttercups, a few purple bellflowers, and the vivid orange of the daylily.

  “Hey, Carrie, time for some girl talk,” I said, settling on the old log that had been knocked down by a big bolt of lightning some several centuries before, or so we figured.

  “Gee, Annie May, I hardly feel like talking at all.”

  “Well, maybe not, but it’s easy to see you’re suffering from the oldest disease known to humans. You’re acting like a lovesick cow.”

  “I didn’t think it would be like this. I always had boys under control.”

  “You did. You were the best at it. But, now I think you’ve been hit by a stray Cupid’s arrow.”

  “What should I do, Annie May? I miss Jamie so much. And, he’s not even my type. I’ve always gone for the wilder ones. The fun ones.”

  “Yeah, Squirrel. But, you always went through them so fast. You got tired of them so quickly I thought we were going to have to move to find you a new batch.”

  Carrie tried
to muster up a laugh but it didn’t seem to go anywhere.

  “Why don’t you start by telling me why you think you have fallen so hard for Jamie?” I ventured slowly, moving only slightly toward Carrie to provide what I thought might be some comfort.

  Carrie stopped to think and stared for a time into the far distance which was the haze of a beautiful horizon forming into the late afternoon as the sun got ready to set with its final show of reds and mauves, occasional soft blues and vibrant yellows, which I tried never to take for granted.

  “I think Jamie is the first boy who has treated me with real respect.

  “At first I thought he was kind of a reject. He didn’t seem to fit in around here and he wasn’t like those boys who visited here one summer from New York who treated us like a bunch of hicks. But, when we spent so much time together over the summer a sort of glow seemed to form. Jamie was patient with me and when I didn’t know something he would explain and show me.

  “And, he was so gentle. He never felt that kindness made him less of a man. And, when he first touched me, I felt a connection I had never felt before. Our first kiss was the tenderest I had ever known.”

  We both sat there in silence as Carrie finished her confession. Stunned, I contributed nothing. We had never been this intimate before. Without even feeling like it was me I moved closer and gave Carrie a hug.

  “Annie May, I don’t know what to do. With Jamie in New York around all those sophisticated girls I worry all the time that he will forget me. But, I know I have to look out for my future as well. Mama has made it clear that she wants me to go to college, at least to a secretarial school or something that can support me. And, I know it would be foolish to give that all up for something that isn’t even certain.

  “I’m no good at farming like you are, Annie May. I’m not smart like you are in school. And, I’m not funny and cute like Georgie.”