In December 2012, on this blog, I transcribed two letters
written by distant family members during the Civil War. Today, I will share another. This letter was
forwarded to me by a lovely woman who was a neighbor of a Childs family member
(my grandmother was a Childs - Edna Ella
Childs Beckington). Mary A. Childs
White, was Edna's father's sister. Mary A. (some say Ann and some say Alice),
married A. Gates White and lived in Garden Prairie, Boone County, Illinois. I
wrote about them in February of this year. This letter - because of the date, must have
been written by Mary A's husband, Gates', father - Amos Gates White, also
called Gates. He was born in 1831, and
died in 1868. His wife was Catherine Cox (1822-1866). They both died in New
Gascony, Jefferson County, Arkansas, but are buried in Garden Prairie,
Illinois. They would have had daughters,
Neenah and Lelia, and son Aurelius Gates (A. Gates) at the time of this letter.
This letter was written by Gates and mailed to his family in
Garden Prairie. It is dated September
12, 1864 and he is in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
It is a story for Catherine to read to the children:
”A Story for Mother to
read to the children"
Very many hundred
years ago in a country called Germany which lies many thousand miles from here
away over the Atlantic Ocean, there lived a King and Queen who had one child, a
little daughter of which they were very fond indeed and their greatest delight
was in studying how they might add to the happiness of their little girl. Now
it came to pass that when little Bertha was a year old, her parents wishing to
celebrate her first birthday in a joyful manner made a great feast to which
they invited all the lords and ladies in the land that they might rejoice with
the King and Queen. Now there dwelt in this Kingdom thirteen wise women and the
King wished to invite them all to the feast, but unfortunately they could not
attend the feast unless their food could be served to them on plates of gold
with golden knives & forks and golden cups from which to drink their wine.
Now the King had only twelve of the golden dishes so he could invite only 12 of
the wise women to sit at his table, and the thirteenth woman was very angry
because she too was not invited to eat with the King.
When the
appointed day came around, the guests all sat down to dinner and when they had
finished eating, each of the wise women began to wish good wishes for Bertha,
the little princess. One wished that she might be very beautiful. The second
that she might always be happy, another that she be very rich and very kind and
good and so on until eleven of the wise women had made their wishes. When the
woman who had not been invited to sit down with the rest, burst into the rooms
and out of revenge for the slight she had suffered, wished that the princess
might die when she was sixteen years old and that her death might be caused by
falling on a spindle, whereupon the twelfth wise woman who still sat at the
table wished that her death might be changed into a hundred years sleep, and
then the company separated and went to their own homes.
But the King
remembering the wish of the angry woman and for years that it might come to
pass caused all the spindles in his Kingdom to be collected and destroyed, and
then thought that he had nothing to fear. But there was one poor woman who
lived in a little cottage near the palace of the King who hid her spindle
during the search and used secretly to spin in her cottage whenever she thought
no one would see her. In the meantime the princess grew up tall and beautiful and
of an angelic disposition so that everyone loved her and praised her both for
her beauty and goodness.
One day when she
was about sixteen years old her father and mother went on a visit to a
neighboring prince and Bertha, white rambling about the fields happened to
enter the cottage where the poor woman was spinning and accidentally fell upon
the spindle and was killed. The servants carried her home and placed her on her
bed where she looked as though she were asleep, and when the King and Queen
came home they too went to sleep and then the servants too fell asleep. The
chamber maid with her broom in her hand, the butler with his keys in his fingers
as he was going to the cellar for wine, the groom as he was cleaning the horses
in the stall, and the cook dropped asleep too with one hand stretched out to
box the ears off the scullion who had neglected to turn the spit on which the
meat was roasting for dinner. The scullion fell asleep too with his hand upon
the spit, in fact all fell asleep even to the flies upon the wall and the dogs
in the yard and the horses in the stable. Even the fire went to sleep with the
blaze still around the kettle and the water ceased to boil and the dinner
ceased to cook, and a hedge of large solid trees grew up all around the palace
so that no one could enter even into the garden where there plants and vegetables
as well as the people were all asleep. And here I much leave the story of the
sleeping princess for the present but some time I will write you an account of
their waking after the hundred years had expired. Dear C, No letters from you,
get no boat for four days hope to get one soon.
Gates
I am sure most of us are familiar with this story - so we
know the ending! I have added some
punctuation to make it a little easier to read. I also looked Scullion up as I thought maybe
he was spelling it wrong - he was not:
servant who performed menial kitchen jobs
(washing, cleaning, etc.) in large
households
during the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance.
