Title: Letter from W. S. G. [?] Andrews to Captain Thomas Sparrow

Identifier: 0001-b1-fa   (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/23824)

Description: Letter from W. S. G. [?] Andrews on board Barque Island City off Fortress Monroe [VA] to Captain Thomas Sparrow and all my old roommates at Fort Warren, Boston. Andrews writes that they have all arrived safely after their sea voyage and their sick have improved. They made the voyage in three days, spending much of that getting around Cape Cod. They arrived at three o'clock in the afternoon, but the pilots would not bring them in so they are going at ten o'clock the next morning. Andrews says that many of the prisoners are sick and have been eating cod fish to improve. They are safe under the guns of the Minnesota and some are singing songs on the deck. One of the prisoners, Martin, says he would rather have stayed at Fort Warren for another two months than take the ship. Andrews then writes that they have all been thinking about Sparrow and hoping for his safe return home. The Civil War correspondence relates the activities of Thomas Sparrow and his Washington Grays from their formation as a volunteer company in April of 1861, until their parole from a Union prison in February, 1862. From the papers of Thomas Sparrow (1819-1884), a lawyer from Washington, N.C. who fought in the Civil War and later represented Beaufort County in the North Carolina General Assembly.