1000 Love Letters!

[connecticut yankee]

During the Civil War, newly enlisted Army surgeon Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed and his wife Hannah, vowed to write to each other every day, “if only a line.” And they kept their promise...

A love story in Civil War letters

Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed and his wife Hannah, vowed to write to each other every day, "if only a line." And they kept their promise as well as

www.capecodtimes.com

 

[John Hartwell]

Very interesting to see the full story of this extraordinary correspondence,

We've seen a little of Dr. Breed here at CWT:

Triage at Armory Square Hospital, Sept. 1-2, 1862 | Medical Care

Dr. Bowman Breed was stationed at Washington’s Armory Square Hospital during the Summer of 1862. Before leaving his home in Lynn, Mass. nearly a year before, he and his wife, Hannah, had promised each other to write every day -- even if only a few words. They very nearly did so all through the...

civilwartalk.com

 

[DBF]

What a romantic:

“The pleasantest hour of the day is that which brings about dusk your ever welcome letter,” Bowman wrote in late June 1861 from Camp Essex outside Baltimore. “The touch of the hand in tracing the lines seems to leave a sort of electricity on the paper which pervades it always.”

They certainly lived through many heartbreaks and I was happy to see that in the end life was blessed for them with healthy children.

 

[lupaglupa]

What a sweet story! I hope the family has plans to share the letters in their entirety and/or to put them in an archive. Those sorts of day-to-day details are precious to researchers.

 

[Cavalry Charger]

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During the Civil War, newly enlisted Army surgeon Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed and his wife Hannah, vowed to write to each other every day, “if only a line.” And they kept their promise...

A love story in Civil War letters

Dr. Bowman Bigelow Breed and his wife Hannah, vowed to write to each other every day, "if only a line." And they kept their promise as well as

www.capecodtimes.com

That was hard to read in some ways, with one child after another after another dying. Their deaths seemed unexplained and in some ways sudden, too. Poor Hannah. She must have been so bereft on those occasions when her husband was not by her side.

These are some of my favorite lines from the article:

The mails were remarkably fast and regular then, even in wartime. Letters sometimes arrived the next day — but for Hannah and Bowman, that often wasn’t quick enough.

“Oh it is hard to be thus separated. Life is not life, living thus,” she wrote.

After one silence, he lamented, “Oh darling these leaden footed hours, when will they bring you to my heart and arms.”

Each seemed to live for the postman’s arrival, delivering their “daily chat.”

“The pleasantest hour of the day is that which brings about dusk your ever welcome letter,” Bowman wrote in late June 1861 from Camp Essex outside Baltimore. “The touch of the hand in tracing the lines seems to leave a sort of electricity on the paper which pervades it always.”

Deeply religious, they ended most letters with a “God bless you.”

 

[John Hartwell]

What a sweet story! I hope the family has plans to share the letters in their entirety and/or to put them in an archive. Those sorts of day-to-day details are precious to researchers.

They've already done it, at least for a selection. See:

My own Dear Wife: a Yankee Couple’s Civil War ​

 

[DaveBrt]

During my Navy career, we were on long-term (6 months or more) separations for about 46 months. My wife and I wrote about every third day -- always complete letters and each in its own envelope. When I retired, I reviewed that stack of letters and decided that it was our life on display. We had not agreed to write with the possibility that others would ever read the letters, so they were clear, frank, raw and intimate -- sometimes with meanings that only we could know. I decided to retain the privacy we had when we wrote them and destroyed all but about a dozen special ones. Some things are private when created and should remain that way.