Lakewood In The Civil War Letters Home To Rockport, Part 2
The Lakewood Historical Society continues to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War with a series of articles focused on Rockport Township (now Lakewood) during that time. Corporal Nathan Hawkins wrote a series of letters home during the Civil War. The letters provide a fascinating look into the life of a Rockport soldier during the Civil War.
The letters of Corporal Nathan Hawkins provide wonderful details about life in the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry for him and his friends from Rockport Township, whom he called his “family.” At home in Rockport these men were neighbors, schoolmates, members of the same church and sometimes related by marriage.
The men most likely attended the same Rockport recruitment meetings and enlisted at about the same time. During the war they were tentmates, kept careful track of each other when separated, visited each other when ill, and wrote home with news of each other. Nathan and his friends even wrote a short poem about their Civil War lives: “My seat is my knapsack, my desk is my knee & a nice happy family are we.”
Nathan spent much time describing the food the soldiers ate, lamenting, “we would get along well enough if we got more to eat.” Like the rest of the soldiers, he grew tired of the rations provided by the Union Army. The rations typically consisted of biscuits (hardtack), coffee and salt pork. The soldiers would occasionally supplement their meals with food purchased from local peddlers and the camp sutler, but it was costly. They anxiously waited for food shipped from their Rockport families and friends. When their camps were located far away from railway lines and major roads, the soldiers would run out of rations and have to confiscate food from local farmers or go hungry. While encamped along the Cumberland River, their camps were surrounded by blackberry patches. The men were delighted to go berry-picking.
In their leisure time, the soldiers wrote letters, read, played card games and baseball, did their laundry, cleaned their tents and repaired their uniforms. “We have taken down our tents to day for the purpose of airing the ground. You have no idea how filthy a tent will get in one week, so much stuff accumulates, every one makes a little dirt, Willie Louis (Lewis) is the worst one I ever saw, as I have charge of the tent, I have to jaw him all the time, he will finish dinner, perhaps leave his plate and cup laying around, perhaps a chunk of meat and two or three hard breads…..go off and play ball.”
Due to bad water, lack of good hygiene, and living in close quarters, many soldiers became ill. Soldiers would develop illnesses which Nathan describes as the “ague,” bilious fever and typhoid fever and were moved to army hospitals. Rockporters Warren Coe and Johnny Andrews both died in Kentucky hospitals of illness in November 1862. “I went to the hospital last night and took care of the sick ones. Jake and Warren are there yet and I am afraid that Warren will never be any better, he looks very bad…”
Sharing their experiences with friends from home certainly made surviving the rigors of camp life and the danger of combat easier for the soldiers from Rockport Township.
2011 is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War--an appropriate time for the Lakewood Historical Society to consider Rockport Township’s participation in the war. For more information on Lakewood’s fascinating history, go to www.lakewoodhistory.org.