Video: Chickasaw County Man Shares Family Letters from The Civil War

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CHICKASAW COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) — On Tuesday we gave you a glimpse into what it must have been like for a Chickasaw County soldier fighting in The Civil War. His great great grandson has in his possession a total of four letters that soldier wrote to his family back home. R. H. Brown has more on the contents of those letters written during the war between the states.

A series of four letters written from Jackson, Canton, and Lauderdale Springs Mississippi, by civil war soldier Thomas Newton Beaty. And yes they do look tattered by the elements, after all they are over 150 years old. One of the letters written by a sick confederate soldier must have been bad news for his wife who kept the home fires burning.

Lamar Beaty:  “And he wounded up being sent to the hospital in Lauderdale Springs Mississippi. And when he was well enough to go back to his company the physician in charge kept him there and he worked as a medic for a good while.”

Contents of the civil war letters reviles the heart of the homesick father and husband….wanting to return home to his loved ones.

Lamar Beaty: “His young child at the time was born after he left and he had not seen her. He mentions in the letters you know wanting to know if she is pretty and is she walking yet and things like that. He had not seen his youngest child.”

A letter dated December 13th 1863 reads: “I intend to try to get home about Christmas.”

Lamar Beaty:  “As all of us do we, if we are away from home we really miss family I think more on holidays than we do on other times. And you could tell he really wanted to be at home Christmas with his family.”

Little did our confederate soldier realize that the war was only about five months away from being ended. Unfortunately Thomas Newton Beaty died of tuberculosis in 1867, two years after the war ended.

The Beaty Civil War Letters are expected to be officially on display at the Chickasaw County Heritage Museum during the upcoming Fly Wheel Festival.