There is a letter Forrest wrote to his son after the surrender at Gainesville. It's very touching. In those times it was customary for a father to write a letter of advice and so forth to a son on his 18th birthday, and this was Forrest's - only he didn't know what was going to happen to him. He might go to Mexico or he might get hung, he didn't know. I can't find the text of the letter but it's one Forrest had his clerk, George Cable, write for spelling and grammar but the composition is all Forrest. In it he advises his son to get all the education he can and to follow his mother's example of living rather than his father's - especially cussing and gambling! One of the interesting things in it is Forrest was most dismayed to find Willie had decided to get married. He told him the girl was 'not worthy of him' and that he disapproved of the match. Willie did not marry this girl but it shows he tended to be impulsive and quick to fall for a pretty face.
I think Forrest was a good father. Willie seems to have come out all right and been an interesting person, a respected businessman and a popular citizen. And he raised his brothers - he was considerably older than all of them, the ones in between having died and left a sizable age gap. He was more like a father to them than a brother. They all seemed to turn out well except for John, who took to drink. He was crippled and, with the abolition of slavery, no longer employable anywhere as he'd been a clerk for his brother.
Forrest loved children. Once when he was stopped at a doctor's house overnight he miffed his guest, who wanted to discuss the war, by spending the whole time with the doctor's two year old boy, who took a shine to the cavalryman. He packed the kid all over the place, crawled under the table with him to play! Now that's not the first picture one sees when thinking about Gen Forrest, sitting under a dining table playing with a two year old...