Fishing Buddies
ON A SUMMER DAY IN 1863, near Fort DeRussy, in the northwest sector of the District of Columbia, Lieutenant Fred Mather of Battery L, 7th New York Heavy Artillery met with an old school chum, Captain George Seward Dawson of Battery F, 2nd New York Heavy Artillery. They went fishing.
Mather loved to fish. More than anything else, he found solace in it. As Mather claimed later in life, he had, as a boy, no further desire “than to be in the woods or on the waters,” and he had “no taste for anything like the harness of civilization.” His friend, Captain Dawson, also loved to fish, and for whatever reason, on this day in 1863, they found peace doing so together. “That day’s fishing was firmly fixed in my mind,” Mather later wrote. Sadly, he continued, “I never fished with him again.”
The 7th New York Heavy Artillery joined Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign at Spotsylvania on May 18, 1864, as] of Washington. Our experience has been one succession of forced marches, severe fighting or rapid entrenching.”
