Existing comment:
Families Shattered:
The battles here did more than obliterate lives; they shattered families. Each of the 15,000 deaths on these battlefields stimulated an emotional, financial, and often physical battle for survival on farms and in towns hundreds of miles from Spotsylvania County.
Colonel John Williams Patterson did in the fighting on the Orange Plank Road on May 6, 1864. Before the war, he was an engineer. His wife Almira was an orphan. His death brought both grief and hardship to his family at home.
"... Presently we were under the hottest fire of Musketry that we ever experienced. Here our beloved Colonel fell shot through the face the ball passing entirely through and lodging in his shoulder, poor fellow. He never moaned but ere his body touched the ground the immortal part had flown and before we could have him carried to the rear we were compelled to fall back & had to leave him."
-- Capt. D.A. James, to Almira Patterson, May 20, 1864 |