No Civil War battles were fought in Cecil County, but the lives of its citizens were shaped by events that unfolded during those fateful years.  In this article Jerre Garrett, the author of Muffled Drums & Mustard Spoons, Cecil County, Maryland 1860 - 1865, tells of the tragedies faced by a Civil War Widow from North East, MD., Sophia Jeffries.  See our book store for more information on Jerre's book.  Also, feel free to e-mail Jerre with you comments.
A Civil War Widow's Tragedies
by Jerre Garrett
For years Sophia Jeffries, for that's how her name normally appears, was known to members of the Historical Society of Cecil County as the writer of the following letter to her husband William, Company A, 8th Maryland.  In May of 1864, their son William was struck and killed by a fish wagon in North East.

"It is with a sad heart I sit to write you these few lines to tell you I am not hardly able to stand it, Have had a hard time of it dear husband.  I wish you could be at home before I lay my precious baby in the gave.  I sent a telegraph dispatch to you, but I never got an answer ftm it.  I am going to bury him Tuesday at two o'clock.  I have got him in ice now waiting for you.  Mr. Craig has proved a friend to me; he said he won't see me want for anything.  He went to the depot and telegraphed to vou.  I don't know what I will do; my poor baby gone and you away.  Do try and get up if you can.  It will almost kill me to lay him in the ground without you seeing him.  I must bring my letter to a close.  May God bless and protect you.
From your wife, Sophia Jeffries."

The Cecil Whig mentioned the baby's death and also the fact that Sophia had been a nurse at Gettysburg the previous summer.  William's pension and service records indicate that Sophia's maiden name was Harvey.  Her brother William joined Company C, 2nd Delaware, under Captain Ben Ricketts in June 1861.  Another brother George enlisted in the summer of 1862 with her husband William.

I tell you old Whig that's what I call the right kind of a sister; I would not mind having a dozen such myself, in case of accident you know.
Captain Ricketts
 
Looking after family members evidently came second nature to Sophia.  She had made the difficult trip to Cambridge, Maryland, when her brother William was sick.  Captain Ricketts, writing under the pseudonym of Big Elk, praised her devotion in a letter dated February 18, 1862, to the Cecil Whig: "One of our sick, (William S. Harvey), of North East started [home?]in charge of his sister.  She heard her brother was sick and came down alone; nearly a hundred mile of the route being by stage.  I tell you old Whig that's what I call the right kind of a sister; I would not mind having a dozen such myself, in case of accident you know."

The records indicate that Sophia's husband William was often sick in 1863.  A letter in the service records contains Sophia's request that he be moved from a hospital in Fairfax Seminary, Virginia, to one closer to home on Camden Street in Baltimore.  That request was granted.  William was still hospitalized in November.

(Most often, Sophia's letters are signed with an X, her mark.  Evidently, she was illiterate, and the other letters were written by someone else for her.  Occasionally, her name is signed, but it appears to have been written with great difficulty.)

Willliam was home on leave between February 20 and March 12, 1864.  By April, he was returning to the field and visited Sophia at the home of James and Elizabeth Buckley in Washington, D.C. From there he moved with his regiment to Virginia and was killed on May 30 near Cold Harbor.

It was at this time the accident occurred in North East.  William probably never knew of his son's death because he was preparing to go into battle.  Sophia, therefore, lost her husband and son within three weeks.  In that same time frame, her brother George was wounded on May 2 1. (The other brother, William Harvey, had been shot in the thigh the previous December.)

Sophia was left with a 9-year-old son Lewis.  But she was pregnant with another baby, James Edward, who would be bom at the Buckley household in Washington on December 11, 1864.  When Sophia applied for an increase in her pension and tried to add James Edward's name as a dependent child, the Govenunent doubted that he was William's son.  Sophia, therefore, had to have witnesses swear that William was with her on his way back to camp.

Since Sophia had seen firsthand the suffering of soldiers at Gettysburg, she knew more than many other women of her time what her husband and brothers faced.  That she had to endure this final indignity from the Government to which her family had exhibited such unswerving loyalty is an irony of fate.

After the war, her surviving 9-year-old son Lewis was placed in the National Homestead, a home for the soldiers' orphans in Gettysburg.  His name appears in an 1870 list as a 16-year-old from Maryland.

Little is known of Lewis until he was lost in a boating accident in 1883.  He and Cecil P. Whitaker, son of George Whitaker, proprietor of Principlo Iron Works, and a black man identified only as Hopkins, were lost in a boating accident off Turkey Point.  They had crossed in a gilling skiff from the Point to Havre de Grace in a stonn.  After completing their business, they were warned not to recross until the wind abated.  But they ignored the advice, and the boat was lost in the heavy seas.  When it was finally retrieved a large hole had been tom in the bow, presumably caused by hitting a snag- the mast was broken off, and the sail missing.  Residents concluded that the boat had capsized because only a coat, which had been stuffed in a hole, remained of the material on board.  The 20-foot skiff was deemed unseaworthy, especially unfit in such violent weather.

The elder Whitaker offered a reward for the return of his son's body.  Captain Poplar of Havre de Grace, was one of those engaged in dragging the river.  The Whig recorded: " [They] brought to the surface of the water, with grappling irons, several bags of phosphate and other contents of the boat.  They devoted the remainder of the day to a thorough search of that locality for the body, and not finding it concluded that Mr. Whitaker had lived to get near the shore.  That night Captain Poplar dreamed that forty rods beyond the place where the bags of phosphate were discovered he found the body.  The next day the same party repaired to the spot indicated in the dream, and almost immediately Mr. Whitaker's body was found by Captain Poplar, and was brought to the surface with iron holding to the identical portion of the body as foreshadowed in the dream."

Through all of this sad experience, Sophia waited, but Lewis's badly decomposed body was not found until May 5, fifteen days after the accident.  He had in his pocket Whitaker's gold watch, which had stopped at 2:00 a.m. From the evidence, the Whig reported the conclusion reached by the locals: "It [the watch] tells the story of the unfortunate men, upon the capsized boat, from the time it went over until about this hour in the morning; of the final determination of Jefferis (the spelling of the surname varies) to take the unshipped mast, and with it to endeavor to reach the shore (marks on his person corroborate this theory); of the hopelessness of Whitaker of ever reaching shore alive; of his snatching the watch from his person, breaking the chain (as he could not use both hands to take it oft) and handing it to Jefferis, to be given to his wife, if he (Jefferis) succeeded in reaching the shore, together with a message of love to his family; of Jefferis' start, the watch in his pantaloons' pocket stopping very soon after it was submerged, and thus marking the time; the fearful struggle against the cruel waves, and the final surrender ......

Sophia reared Lewis's daughter Ida.  In turn, Ida, her name in marriage, Mrs. John Norman, took her grandmother into her home and cared for her in her declining years.  Sophia died there on January 27, 1908.  Cemetery records indicate that she is buried next to her son William.

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