Beschreibung:

Four manuscript pages (5 x 8 in.) that have been transcribed on 4 typed sheets. These are the reminiscences of Victoria Bryant Jenkins, related about 1937. Charles Sweeney lived in a small cabin, now within the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. Charles' cousin was Joel Sweeney - often credited with popularizing the 5-string American banjo. There were other Sweeney cabins within sight of each other. Charles' cabin was used as Fitzhugh Lee's headquarters from April 8 - 11, 1865. Victoria Bryant was the sister of Charles Sweeney's wife. Many of the children in the Sweeney clan spent extended periods with aunts, uncles, cousins, especially when the men were off fighting. Victoria begins her story: "The horrors of the last battle of the war between the states which was fought April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House is still very vivid to me." "I was born September 5, 1859 in Appomattox county and lived there until I was married at the age of seventeen...." "It was just one week before General Lee surrendered that the Southern soldiers commenced to come through where we lived....they took everything to eat as they went. Not a chicken, turkey, hog or beef was left after the army had passed through". "I heard the booming of the cannons and the popping of muskets very distinctly. While that last battle was being fought at the Court House, both lines of battle were being formed at the crest of the hills on either side of our home..." "Three or four days before the surrender, Lee had his headquarters in my sister's home....The surrender took place under an apple tree in an orchard within a city block of my sister's home. Her husband, Charlie Sweeney was a soldier too. When night came there was not a root of the tree left in the ground. Every possible soldier had obtained a pi[e]ce of that tree in remembrance of the surrender. They carved little Bibles of the bark and made some rings, trinkets, and breastpins as keepsakes. I can remember playing in the hole which was left by the uprooting of the tree.... " She goes on to note that all of their homes became makeshift hospitals for the sick and wounded, and after the battle, the dead lay strewn all over the ground. They were buried in a mass grave. "The home of my sister stands as a sentinel for the surrender and a memorial for the lost cause. It has been made a Confederate Shrine and though old and worn, if it could but talk it could tell you much more than I." There are some inaccuracies in her account, but she was only a child when it all happened. The surrender did not happen under the apple tree, for example, but Lee is reported to have rested under that tree just before his meeting with Grant. She is correct that the tree is gone and trinkets made from it appear on the market periodically. She reports that General Lee headquartered at her sister's house, and her sister was married to Charles Sweeney, but other reports are that Fitzhugh Lee headquartered at Charles Sweeney's house. It was a General Lee, but maybe not the one she thought it was. Condition: Paper lightly toned, but not brittle.