Leonard Stephens Letter, 12 Jan 1865

Beech Woods, Kenton County, Ky. 12th January 1865

Dear Brother William,

About two weeks ago your kind letter of the 8th of last month came to hand & would have been answered sooner, but I have not been in a condition to write, & do not know whether I shall be able to hold out to write you an old fashion letter, for I am quite feeble. It will be two weeks ago tomorrow since I had an attack of cold which ran into phthisis and I have suffered considerably and altho better to day it is liable to return at any time and I am uneasy constantly for fear of it doing so. I am closely confined to the house. The weather here now is exceedingly bad. The snow is about half leg deep and quite cold. The rest of my folks with two exceptions are well. Those two are Moses and little Tom who are complaining tho I hope not seriously sick. Reuben Bristow was here today to see me and reported some of his folks sick. The children there both white and black have had mumps and are just getting over them. Napoleon & Lucien's folks were here last Sunday and were then all well. I sincerely hope you all are well and was truly glad to hear of that being the case when you wrote. We heard of William's death before getting your letter, the account came here through a letter to young Garrett. I think his name is William. He is a son of Joel Garnett of Missouri.

We have had a death here among our friends last Saturday night that we all deplore very much. It was Frances Stephens, Ezekiel Stephens' wife. You will, of course, recollect her. As you know they lived at Brother Edmund's, & she was indeed a first rate woman. She leaves her husband and four boys, the youngest about seven months old. I think I never knew a lady that filled all the positions of child wife and mother better than she did. Brother Edmund often spoke of her as being so kind and affectionate to him. She was only sick about two weeks. She was here on Christmas day, and I was not aware of anything being the matter but I have heard since that she was complaining then. I saw Ezekiel yesterday, he is indeed a disconsolate man.

I have not heard anything from our friends in East Bend for several weeks. James Stephens & Thadeous Ryle were here in November and Richard Stephens was here about the first of December. They reported the friends there generally well, that Sister Agnes was about as she had been for some time. I did not understand from them that there was any perceivable change in her condition. She sent word by all that passed that she wanted me to come & see her & I laid off all the fall to go & had an arrangement with Napoleon and Bettie Bristow to go & the time set, but the weather turned out to be so bad that we had to decline. So I have not been, & I do not feel that I have discharged my duty to her & now of course take the weather & my feeble & uncertain health & there is no prospect of getting there before Spring. A strange matter has turned up here within the last six months. It is the separation of old Dickey Rice & his wife. They I suppose are as effectively separated as if one had died. They have caused a regular article of separation to be drawn up, and have both signed it. His family lived where Mr. Wait did live near Reuben Bristow's. He and Wait swapped lands & Wait lived about a mile above Walton where Rice did live. Rice has been staying around among his friends since they parted. He has been staying here a good deal of the time. The whole family seemed to be against him and they tried to convict him of insanity, but failed in that, & really I suppose it is impossible for any one to find any just grounds for parting. He says however they have lived unhappily together for twenty years and that during that time his life has been a misserable one. He has plenty of means to live upon & has given to his family enough to do them.

You give my Dear Brother a rather disponding account of matters in your State. I would fain wish that yours was the only section of the country that was likely to suffer from the deplorable conditions of our once happy & prosperous country, because then the damages could be repaired by those who had not suffered, but it is not so. I am three hands worse off than I was eight months ago. First Julius went after being drafted & I expected & intended to pay him out for he at first insisted that I should buy him off, but others interfered and got him to go. His career was short lived for I suppose he was killed at Bourbridge's first fight at Saltville. I had no doubts of it for some time tho it is recently said there had been accounts he was not. Next, Jerry took it into his head to go, he went to Covington & they employed him in the Government Stables there, he after being there about ten days came home as I supposed to stay, but only stayed one night, then went back, walked down there in the forepart of the day, and dyed about Sundown that evening. The Statement was that he was lifting some sacks of grain that were unhandy & that in straining at one he fell back and only breathed a few times. I as little expected Jerry to leave home as I expected to leave myself for I know he was not fit for the service & then he had as easy a time at home as any one ought to have desired. He worked as he pleased & all his real wants were supplied. There was certainly some hallucination that is inexplicable. When we heard he was dead Tom went down and altho he was buried had him taken up & brought home & buried in the negro burying ground here. Lige went off about the same time and enlisted for three years & is in the service somewhere. I have yet at home Tom, Landy, Moses & Henry but how long they may be here is as I think wholly uncertain. There is a nother draft ordered to take place on the 15th of Feb & two or three of them are liable to be drafted, & substitutes are now so high as to put it out of the question to hire them, & indeed they are now staying with an expectation of being paid for their services, so that they are really no longer slaves but hired servants.

Reuben Bristow's Nelson was drafted & he protested against going, insisted that his Master should buy him off which he did, & then he went in a short time and enlisted so there is no security or certainty in their staying, and then there are individuals all the while persuading them to go.

Well, I have been trying to give you the neighborhood news, and it is all bad. There is another item of news, for next Tuesday evening, it is that Kate Stephens, Napoleon's daughter, is to be married to Mr. Athey whom you will recollect as seeing there for he has been boarding there for several years. Betsy Haden left Ky. in August last & promised to write to me immediately on her return home, but if there has been any word from her since she left I have not been able to hear it altho I have made all the inquiry I could about her. If you have heard of her return from Missouri I wish you would let me know it, for really I am very uneasy about her. Sister Polly was here at Christmas & was then quite well. Sister Nancy was here about the first of December & was enjoying good health apparently. Brother Billy I think from the general tenor of your letter you must be feeling somewhat uncomfortable & really I feel a good deal so.

Last summer the condition of things here was such that I feared you might not be safe here, but I now think & believe you would be entirely safe & I now cordially & sincerely desire you to come here & spend just as long a time with us as may suit you to do so & hope you will decide without any hesitation to come. I assure it will afford us all great pleasure to have you with us. I wish you to write immediately in answer to this & let me know you are coming and when we may expect you, & now in conclusion present me affectionately to all your children and Grand children, and for yourself my kindest brotherly love.

May God bless you
Leonard Stephens

Notes:

Neither Moses nor little Tom identified. Return.

An acute, contagious viral disease, mumps was widespread among children before vaccination became common. Return.

William not identified. Both Stehens and Garnett families had several of that name. Return.

Joel W. R. Garnett (1819-1878) was a son of "Old Uncle" Anthony Garnett. See above, 24 Feb 1840. Return.

Frances Ann Robinson (1829-1865) was buried at Beech Woods. Return.

Among the orphans were Frank (b. 1854) and John (1859). Two other children had died young, Edmund W. and Robert; they were buried near their mother at Beech Woods. Return.

James Stephens not identified. Possibly either James Henry (1845-1920, son of Thomas Paine Stephens and Elizabeth Calvert) or his first cousin, James J. (1845-1924, son of John Quincy Adams Stephens and Lucy Ann Berkshire). They were known as "Red Jim" and "Black Jim" among the family. Ryle, 306. Return.

Thaddeus Constantine Sobieski Ryle (1826-1904), son of David Ryle and Elizabeth Stephens, had married America Nelson Stephens (1831-1893), daughter of James Nelson Stephens and Louisa H. Nelson. Return.

Richard Stephens (1806-1890), son of Benjamin Stephens, Jr. and Agnes Nelson, who had married in 1827 his cousin, Permelia Sandford (1809-1872), daughter of Thomas Sandford and Nancy Stephens. Return.

His grandchildren, Statira's children. Napoleon Stephens Bristow (1849-1926) and Mary Elizabeth Bristow (1842-1901), who married in 1866 Thomas Jefferson Childress (1836-1908), who had worked for General Stephens before the war. Return.

Richard Rice (1800-1872) had married Polly A. Carpenter (1808?-1871) in Boone in 1824. The couple and their children were listed in Boone in 1850 and 1860. She and three of their children are found in 1870 near Independence, but he is not to be found. The story came to a gruesome conclusion a few years later, as seen in this item from a local paper:

A Lunatic Burned to Death.

An old man named Richard Rice was adjudged to be a lunatic by jury in the County Court a short time ago, and a committee appointed to take charge of him. The asylum at Lexington being full, admission for the old man to that institution could not be obtained for some time, and he was accordingly taken to his residence, about three miles south of Independence, where a sort of cell was built in one of the rooms, into which he was placed, so that he could not do himself or others harm. On Friday, of last week, the weather being pretty cold, the cell was shoved up within a few feet of the fireplace, and during the night Rice tore open his mattress, made a rope out of a portion of the straw he got out of it, stuck the end of the rope into the fire, and, drawing it back into the cell, set fire to his bedding, and was burned to death before any one on the place could render assistance. Mr. Rice was seventy years old, and a man of considerable property.

The career of Mr. Rice and that of his family, or some members of it, has been unhappily eventful. He lived with his wife some forty years, and then left her because he imagined that she and the balance of the family were combining to get him out of the way in order to get hold of his property, when in fact they were merely taking measures to secure him from harm, he having exhibited decided symptoms of insanity. This happened several years ago and a divorce followed.

Covington Journal, 23 Nov 1872, p 3 c 1.

Stephen Waite (1815-1886) had married Leonard's niece Almeda Stephens (1816-1896). See above, 12 Dec 1863. Return.

Walton was a village in Boone County on the Lexington Pike about ten miles south of Florence, near the county line. Return.

Stephen Gano Burbridge (1831-1894) had assumed command of Federal forces in his native state in February 1864. His high-handedness and ineptitude so alienated Kentuckians of all political views that Lincoln removed him a year later. The Federal expedition to Saltville, in southwestern Virginia, did manage to disrupt operations of some lead mines, but otherwise had minimal effect. Return.

Like Jerry, many blacks who were not drafted into the Army were hired to work as stablehands for wages of $30 a month. Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 13 Jul 1864. Return.

The Negro burying ground not located. Return.

Perhaps for Elijah, not identified. Julius, Jerry, and Lige were among almost 20,000 Kentucky slaves who served in the Union Army during the war. Return.

General Stephens, although distressed over the conscription of slaves (and concerned in a paternal manner for their welfare), did not share the outraged views of many of his colleagues. The draft was bitterly resented by many white Kentuckians who, like Gov. Thomas Bramlette and Col. Frank Wolford, were otherwise strong Unionists. See previous letter. Return.

Judge Robert Athey (1825-1901), who later served as mayor of Covington. Return.