American Historical Ephemera & Early Photography Online

Autograph letter signed from "Anna" to her "Aunt Mankin," Mrs. Isaiah Mankin (Martha Bininger Gautier Mankin), of Mount Vernon, West Chester County, New York. Baltimore [Maryland], 26 July 1863. 10pp, approx. 5 3/4 x 7 1/2 in. (pages 9/10 approx. 7 1/2 x 3 1/2 in.). Descriptive letter in which the young niece provides details on contemporary events, including the purported battlefield heroics of Civil War nurse Arabella Griffith Barlow (1824-1864), wife of Union General Francis Channing Barlow (1834-1896), WIA Gettysburg.

Anna writes initially of Sioux atrocities in the Dakota Territory, family news, and the loss of many men in battle, noting the efforts of parents to recover bodies of their sons who perished recently at the Battle of Gettysburg. She then continues: "We hear constantly of many acts of individual heroism where people seem inspired to perform deeds that seems almost incredible. I now want to tell you of a noble woman who is here nursing her husband. She heard that he was wounded and immediately procured a horse & waving a white flag rode over the battle field during the thickest of the firing, her horse was shot. She mounted another & continued her search. She was told at last that he was a prisoner she rode over to Gen Lee or Early (I don't know which) & asked permission to search for her husband's body in their lines ... He told her he so much admired her devotion & bravery, that he would release him unconditionally if still living. She found him and had him carried off the field...." Anna then continues describing how [Arabella Barlow] was able to have her husband's body moved to Baltimore when he was well enough to travel, and he has been cared for at 'The Hopkins on Franklin St.'...His name is Gen Barlow & he is from some part of New York...."

[With:] Disbound album page, approx. 8 3/4 x 11 3/4 in., featuring an oval cut albumen photograph of a youthful Francis C. Barlow, with manuscript identification below image "F.C. Barlow / Cambridge Mass." Undated, ca 1855. Possibly an album page from a Harvard University album. Barlow graduated Harvard first in his class in 1855.

The story of General Francis Barlow and his wife Arabella at Gettysburg has been an enduring one, both for the documented affection the couple had for one another and the circulation of various versions of the wounding and rescue of the General. Arabella Wharton Griffith married Francis Barlow in 1861 after Barlow's enlistment. Wishing to stay near her husband, Arabella proceeded to serve as a Civil War nurse before contracting typhus and dying while in the service of her country in 1864. In 1996 a marker was placed over Arabella's grave in Somerville Cemetery, Somerville, New Jersey. The inscription reads: "Arabella Barlow served as a nurse during the Peninsula, Antietam and Gettysburg Campaigns. In 1861 she married General Francis Channing Barlow whom she twice nursed back to life from grievous wounds. She nursed at hospital sites at Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House and City Point 'with no thought but for those who were suffering and dying all around her.'" Following the war, General Barlow married Ellen Shaw, the sister of Col. Robert Gould Shaw.