Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -
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Sale 2708 - Lot 58

Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
(CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Laura V. Arnold. Letter by a patriotic Confederate woman while serving as a nurse to her wounded brother. Autograph Letter Signed to Colonel Davison. 2 pages, 8 x 5 pages, on one sheet; mailing folds, mounting strip on margin of second page slightly affecting text. American Hospital [Staunton, VA], 12 July 1863
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Laura V. Arnold (1840-1903) was a Winchester, VA woman who was caring for her wounded Confederate brother at the C.S.A. hospital compound in Staunton, VA. Here, with her brother still recovering and her mother severely ill in Winchester, she pleads for his release from service:

"I make one more appeal to you this morning in behalf of my brother, who has been very ill for six weeks. . . . I have nursed him all through his illness and it is so hard that I have to go home without him when he has been kept from his home so long by the Yankes, and I received a dispatch this morning from home stating that my mother is very ill, and wants me to bring my brother. . . . Oh, Conell, make this an exception and approve his furlough for his mother's sake. . . . He has his papers from Genneral Lee given him from Richmond to Staunton so that he could get to his home, and he belongs to Lee's body guard, and I am sure that he would not condem you if he knew the case, for he is a man of feeling. I would telegraph him if I posably could. . . . I will pay his transportation to Winchester. Oh, Conell, try and oblige me in this."

Her oldest brother John Wesley Arnold (1843-1915), a private in the 5th Virginia Infantry, was likely the wounded soldier. Their mother May Noaks Arnold lived until 1871.

Laura Arnold was locally renowned for her Confederate spirit, as described in her short Baltimore Sun obituary on 11 January 1903, headlined "Defied Federal General." It notes that she was remembered in Winchester for "her devotion to the Confederacy and because of an incident which has become almost as famous through the South as the alleged Barbara Fritchie incident has in the North. The Federal troops under General Milroy were in possession of Winchester and the Federal commander one day noticing a fine Jersey cow belonging to Miss Arnold's father promptly confiscated the animal. He would not give it up until Miss Arnold . . . would take the oath of allegiance. She replied 'If you think you can suppress the Southern Confederacy by keeping John Arnold's old cow, you can do so, but I will never take the oath.' Her spirit so impressed the stern Federal general that the cow was promptly restored to her, and the Union soldiers were ordered to never again molest the Arnold household." See also a longer discussion of this January 1863 Milroy incident in Wittenburg & Mingus, "The Second Battle of Winchester," page 9.

In a later obituary in the Highland Chronicle of Monterey, VA, 31 January 1903, a Confederate veteran recalled: "Well do I remember her kindness to me when a prisoner quartered in the courthouse at Winchester. She would take no denial from the officers in charge, but fed me on the best she could procure. Many of her brave and daring deeds are remembered by me and many old soldiers."

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