Old Letters Were a Slice of Civil War History
By Janice Leonard Morrow and
Susan Leonard Toll

About 20 years ago, Margaret Trask was asked to clean up all the old papers in her cousin's house in East Barnard and throw them away. Her cousin was entering a nursing home. The house was overflowing and needed to be emptied out.

As she piled papers in the trash, though, one envelope caught her eye. She recognized her grandfather Frank Snow's writing, so she stashed the envelope in her pocket and went back to work sifting through old newspapers and magazines.

"I saw Grandpa's writing and it just made me curious," she recalls. Now age 95, Margaret Trask is delighted that her curiosity years ago prompted her to save that envelope. Inside, she found a collection of 52 folded letters sent home by her grandfather, Francis Young Snow, to his parents in Sharon while he was fighting in the Civil War.

By saving one envelope, Margaret Trask preserved her family's Civil War history. The documents are in remarkable condition. The penmanship is quite good, but punctuation is non-existent and the spelling is often entertaining. One phrase puzzled Margaret Trask for a long time. Frank Snow seemed to have written that he would have to "leave off using to backer because it was too expensive." Only when the illegible letters were finally deciphered as "to backer" for "tobacco" did it make perfect sense.

At age 17, Frank Snow was a typical Vermont farm boy who, like his two older brothers, enlisted in the Vermont Volunteers. His wartime duties began in Brattleboro, at Camp Holbrook, where he slept in "bunks five high." His regiment took the train to New York, marched through the city, and boarded the James Hovey to sail to Ship Island off the coast of New Orleans.

The Vermont Eighth under Colonel Stephen Thomas of Bethel and General Benjamin Butler were to occupy New Orleans.

Most of the letters start with the same phrase, noted Margaret Trask—"I take my pen in hand to let you know I am well and I hope you are the same." The letters go on to relate the dreary wartime existence of young soldiers: "The officers put a guard over the Succesh [secessionist] water tanks. We privates can't get a good drink of water. We have to drink bayou water and that is salty."

As the war progressed, escaped slaves flooded to the Union forces. Frank Snow's regiment, under Colonel Thomas (a Bethel man), prepared them to fight for their freedom.

"I wish you could see the [escaped slaves]," Snow wrote. "There are about 1,500 here now and more keep coming. They steal their masters’ horses and wagons. They look neat all dressed in uniform with their guns. They march first rate and are ready to fight."

The Vermont 8th fought alongside some of the first black troops to go into battle for the North in the Siege of Port Hudson. (The famous Massachusetts 54th Regiment saw battle weeks later.) Writes Frank Snow of the siege:

"We have the rebels surrounded now so we can starve them out. They haven't got more than six weeks of provisions say the prisoners. The first day we had a pretty hard time. We drove them about a mile from one breastwork to another.

"I am a mile and a half from the regiment now. I got hit in the upper lip with a buck shot and it knocked out one tooth and a piece of my jaw. It hurts me to eat but it is nothing compared to what some have got. The black regiment went into battle near us and they lost many, many men. We lost considerably many men, and I expected every shell to take me. "

One of the most poignant letters from Frank Snow to his mother refers to the death of his older brother George, who died from disease. Many of the Vermont casualties in the Civil War were the result of malaria, typhoid, and dysentery rather than from battle. But Snow explains that from his perspective, dying of disease would be better than being wounded and suffering through the medical care available in the nineteenth century. 

"O mother. It is hard to think that we shall not see George again but I should rather be sick and die than be wounded and live for a day or two and then die. O it was hard to see the wounded boys and hear them carry on. O I could not stay where they were. It was a hard sight, you better believe. "

After the Civil War, Frank Snow returned home. He had contributed some of his wartime wages to the family farm, so he settled down to a life of farming in Sharon and East Barnard. He married Luvilla Perry, and they had three daughters. Snow lived until age 91 and died in 1933 in his home on Allen Hill Road in East Barnard. 

Margaret Trask remembers her grandfather well. "One of my favorite memories of him is that he always used to carry candies in his pockets for us when we were kids. He suffered a broken arm that was never set properly and it gave him trouble all his life."

Margaret Trask grew up Margaret Billings in Barnard. She married Richard Trask and lived in Brookfield where they raised their four children. She now resides at Mayo Manor in Northfield. She is the mother of three grown children: Lois Trask Wakefield of Randolph, Zylpha Trask of Charlotte, and Donald Trask of Rutland. Although she is somewhat reticent speaking about herself, Margaret Trask is pleased that Frank Snow's story has been brought to light. She has given his letters to a relative to transcribe and preserve.

The Civil War monument on the town common in Sharon bears the names of Francis Snow, his brothers George and Sylvester, and a list of all those who fought in the war to preserve the Union. The list is long indeed. Vermont and New Hampshire lost a greater percentage of young men in the Civil War than other states, and now one Vermont boy's story has been salvaged because Margaret Trask was curious enough to open an envelope.