Tompkins Farm.— [I] walked with Captain Gaines two
and one-half or three miles down to Gauley Bridge. Called on Major William H.
Johnston and Swan, paymaster and clerk for our regiment [for] Cracraft,
quartermaster sergeant, who wanted Dr. McCurdy's pay. To get it, drew my own
and sent him two hundred and sixty dollars and blank power-of-attorney to me to
draw his pay. The doctor is sick and wants to go home. Our regiment suffers
severely with camp fever. About one hundred and twenty absent, mostly sick, and
as many more prescribed for here. This out of nine hundred and fifty. Severe
marches, ill-timed, in rain, etc., etc., is one great cause. Then, most of our
men have been used to comfortable homes, and this exposed life on these
mountains is too much for them.
Well, we dined at a Virginia landlady's, good coffee, good
biscuit; in short, a good homelike dinner. Walked immediately back.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and
Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 132
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