Letters from a Confederate Soldier and others to Miss Sally Strong, 1862-1869

By Maria Elisa B. Byington

Among the families who left the United States after the Civil War to seek their fortunes in Brazil, and settled in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, Sao Paulo, and later Americana, was the clan of Henry Strong. Henry left his home in Brookhaven, Mississippi, in 1867, and headed South with his daughter Sarah Amanda (Sally) and other family members. Sally Strong did leave behind a love-sick young Mississippian named Tom Atkins. From the middle years of the war, through its convulsive conclusion and into the turmoil that was the Reconstruction, Tom pined for his love across the seas. Sally kept his letters in a little suitcase. and these letters were preserved over the years until, through the tireless efforts of Maria Elisa Byington, they have come to light in this collection. Tom's chronicles open a window onto life in 19th century Mississippi. - Cyrus B. Dawsey

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOOKNANDO LIVROS LTDA
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9786556610061

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Copyright © 1999 Maria Elisa B. Byington

Coordination: Maria Elisa B. Byington

Texts Revision: Leonardo Pereira

Graphic Design: Maina Junqueira

Cover: Katia Harumi Terasaka

Photographs of the suitcase and little doll: Fernando Laszlo

Other Photographs: Family archives

Maps: Marcos Barreto

Graphic production: Geraldo Alves

Produção ePub: Booknando

1ª edição impressa: abril de 2001

1ª edição digital: junho de 2020

All rights reserved to

Maria Elisa B. Byington Rua Alberto Faria, 429

05459-000 São Paulo SP Brasil

Fax [phone]

E-mail: [e-mail]

Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP)

(Camara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil)

Letters from a Confederate Soldier and others to Miss Sally Strong (1862-1869) / Maria Elisa B. Byington (coordenadora). — São Paulo - 2001.

178 p. ; ePUB.

ISBN: 978-65-5661-006-1 (Ebook)

1. Atkins, B. T. 2. Cartas norte-americanas 3. Estados Unidos — Guerra Civil, 1861-1865 4. Strong Sally I. Byington, Maria Elisa B.

99-1407

CDD-920

Índices para catélogo sistematico:

1. Cartas de soldados confederados : Biografia 920

Table of Contents

Cover

Page Title

Copyright

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One - War letters poems

Poems

Part Two- Letters to Brazil

Other Letters

Part Three

Epilogue

An Old Landmarn Gone

Bibliography

Appendix

Landmarks

Cover

Table of Contents

To my daughter Mariana

and my grandchildren

Mathieu and Alexandre

who may someday want to visit

the land of their ancestors.

FOREWORD

Historians are like cats watching a string being drawn across the floor. They watch, gently paw, and eventually unable to contain their curiosity, pounce on the curious thread. They follow it around corners and over obstacles, and if luck is on their side, they find satisfaction at the far end. The history of the post-Civil War migration of Americans to Brazil has provided many such threads. Prominent scholars such as Judith MacKnight Jones, Betty Antunes de Oliveira, Eugene Harter, and others have spent much of their lives chasing down leads from the unravelling ball of twine that was the Confederado community.

Confederados is the name that has been applied to the group of Southerners who, afraid and unhappy over the outcome of their war with the North, left the United States in the mid-1860s to seek their fortunes in Brazil. Though many eventually returned to North America, a significant portion remained in that country as permanent citizens. For generations they worked to preserve elements of their original culture (including a preference for speaking English) and, in the process, left a mark on the surrounding Brazilian society. For example, the Confederados played a crucial role in the establishment of Baptist, Presbyterian and Methodist churches and schools in that country.

Among the families that settled in the vicinity of Santa Barbara and Americana was the clan of Henry Strong. Henry left his home in Brookhaven, Mississippi in 1867 and headed south with his daughter Sarah Amanda (Sally) and other family members. Only sketchy information on the activities of the Strong household is available.¹’ Henry Strong moved to the Americana region, onto the Fazenda Barrocdao in the

Funil area near the rapids on the Rio Piracicaba, after the collapse of the C. G. Gunter colony in the Rio Doce valley north of Rio de Janeiro² Sally must have been an attractive young lady and a coveted potential mate for the local bachelors. Though she may have been courted by several, Sally never married. Jones claims that the earlier combat death of her fiancé was the reason, but the tale is unconfirmed and may not be true.³

Sally Strong did leave behind a lovesick young Mississippian named Tom Atkins. From the middle years of the war, through its convulsive conclusion, and into the turmoil that was the Reconstruction, Tom pined for his love across the seas. As the years passed, he wrote letters describing the conditions of his world, of the fighting, of his friends, of his life, and of his breaking heart. Sally, and later her descendants, preserved the letters over the years until, through the tireless efforts of Maria Elisa Byington, they come to light in this collection.

Tom’s chronicles open a window onto life in 19th-century Mississippi. He describes the mundane, such as the boredom of his position as deputy sheriff, and his failure in the grocery business (He only lost $400.00 of the original investment.). In early 1864 he states with certainty that our prospects are good for victory, long after the fate of the Confederacy was doomed. Finally in July of that year he claims to have lost confidence in our generals as the tide of war was obviously running out. The hardship and suffering are much in evidence.

Through the letters we get a glimpse of the drama that played out in the postwar American South. And the image is made all the more authentic because preserving a historical record was not the principal purpose of Mr. Atkins’ epistles. He was simply trying to keep alive the flickering hope that one day he would be able to convince his true love to unite with him in marriage. She never did, of course. Unfortunately, we do not have access to any correspondence that may have come from Sally Strong. These letters, therefore, shed little light on conditions in the Brazilian settlement. We cannot tell if she ignored Tom Atkins, teased and prodded his desire, or made promises that were never carried out. Whatever their relationship, enough was said and done to keep a young, and later aging, man interested for many years.

By painstakingly compiling and transcribing the letters in this collection, Maria Elisa Byington provides a great service to those interested in the turbulent times of, and immediately after, the American Civil War. The world has changed, and most of the causes that men fought and died for no longer appear to be of great relevance. What Tom Atkins expressed in his letters, however, are the eternal human qualities that do not change: love, suffering, aging, and hope. As a result of Sra. Byington’s efforts, we are presented with a thread that leads us back to the past. As we read, our thoughts and feelings are pulled back to the outer strife of a vanquished land, and the inner turmoil of a lonesome soul. Scholarship has been enriched by this work.

Cyrus B. Dawsey

Acknowledgements

Whenever any new documents surface about the Confederates who emigrated to Brazil after the Civil War, we are reminded of our debt to Judith MacKnight Jones, author of the book Soldado Descansa! Uma Epopéia Americana sob os Céus do Brasil. (São Paulo: Jarde, 1967). Judith’s efforts at gathering from the descendants much information which might otherwise have been lost, added to her talent as a storyteller and her wonderful chronicles about the lives of the immigrants, increased my interest on Sally Strong’s letters when they were found in 1998.

Judith introduced me to Betty Antunes de Oliveira, a dedicated historian in Rio de Janeiro, working on the origins of the Baptist Church in São Paulo. Her research through archives and documents, of which some no longer exist (Centelha em Restolho Seco, Rio de Janeiro, 1985), unravelled the connections between the families who founded the First Baptist Church in Santa Barbara d’Oeste, São Paulo, amongst which were the Strongs. Betty provided me with much of the information available about the Strong family.

In 1995 Professors Cyrus B. Dawsey and James M. Dawsey’s book, The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil, was published by the Alabama University Press. It consists of a collection of essays by different scholars about the saga’of the Confederados complemented with an annotated bibliography. The Dawsey brothers grew up in Brazil, in Piracicaba, near Santa Barbara, to where they return quite often. I am grateful to Prof. Cyrus B. Dawsey for writing the Foreword and considering Sally’s letters worth publishing even though there are no testimonies of what Sally had to say, except Tom Atkins’s words for it and the information that was passed along from generation to generation.

Thanks to Lila Byington Egydio Martins, Sally’s letters have been found. They were in a little straw suitcase that was deposited in her attic after our grandmother’s home was sold. Betsey Manning Lurie, a cousin living in Clearwater, Florida, sent us letter n°.12 of January 22nd, 1869,through which we learned of the circunstances which led Sally’s sister, Mrs. Ellis, to embark to Brazil with her children. Richard Byington Manning, of Seattle, Washington, sent us a scrapbook which once belonged to Sally Strong.

Janett Anderson Gibbs from Athens, Georgia, wrote to the Fraternity of American Descendants in Santa Barbara, São Paulo, interested in coming to their annual reunion in 1999; she is a gggreatgrandniece of Henry Strong. Upon learning of our project for publishing Sally’s letters, she forwarded information supplied by Eleanor Dees Taylor and Hazel Ellys Lewellyn of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, along with the genealogies of the Strong and Ellis families.

Mrs. Gibbs unexpected gift was a copy of a newspaper article which appeared in the Daily Leader, Dec. 11th, 1981, with a photograph of the house built by Henry Strong in Brookhaven. The article describes the house and gives the names of its former owners, for it was to be the site for the inauguration of an antique business.

With help from Sydney Wilson, of Betsy Smith Properties in Brookhaven, it was possible to identify the house and additional pictures were then taken by Johnny C. Smith. Henry Strong’s former house is one of the oldest remaining ante-bellum homes in the Brookhaven area and is now the proud possession of Doctors Caleb and Natalie Hernford.

Fernando Laszlo contributed with the photographs of the little suitcase in which the letters were kept and of the miniature doll with hearts in her dress found inside the suitcase. Alex Wirz Vieira and Fabiano J. Soares initiated me in the secrets of the computer and Leontina C. Jacubcionis collaborated in the transcription of the manuscript letters. Anne Sears Wilson of Groton, Massachussets, after revising the first draft sent suggestions and encouragement to proceed with the project. Paul Cartwright, Director of Copiah-Jefferson Regional Library, and Rebecca Nations and Mary Sanders of Lincoln-Lawrence-Franklin Regional Library, in Brookhaven, Mississippi, complemented the findings in Jackson archives with facsimiles of old newspapers. Regina Celia was so enthralled with her revision and proof-reading work that she did researchon the Internet for old military terms used during the Civil War. Maina Junqueira brought the book to its present format and spent tireless hours organizing the numerous details involved. Fife Mac Duff did a final revision of the text.

The magnolia was chosen as a very special token and a link betwen days of old and present memories. Many times during our childhood my brothers and I played under the shadow of two magnificent magnolia trees that existed in the garden of our grandparents home in São Paulo. When the house was sold, our mother Elisa Botelho Byington transplanted a branch to a nearby farm and the tree (magnolia grandiflora) is now almost forty years old. It has always been a most beloved flower. Its fragrance permeates nostalgic souvenirs of our childhood. We did not know then that the magnolia was the symbol tree of Mississippi, the land of our ancestors.

To all whose comments and suggestions helped create this quilt of past memories and made possible the publishing of these letters, I am deeply grateful.

Part of the proceedings from the sale of this book will go to Cruzada Pré-Infancia in São Paulo, the institution founded in 1930 by Pearl Ellis Byington, a grandniece of Sarah Suzanah Amanda Strong. At present the institution attends to approximately one thousand children and their families in eight daycare centers and one home for street children.

M. E. B. Byington São Paulo

INTRODUCTION

"In our every deliberation

we must consider

the impact of our decisions

on the next seven generations."⁴

After the Civil War, in 1867, Henry Strong, then sixty-three years of age and a widower, left his home in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and with other southerners emigrated to Brazil. He was accompanied by his daughter Sally (Sarah Suzanah Amanda), a granddaughter and her husband, and a devoted friend, William R. Brown. In Santa Barbara d’Oeste, São Paulo, he bought Fazenda Barrocão and there he lived till the end of his days.

Tom Atkins, a Mississippian, continued to write to Sally Strong just as he had done since the early years of war. His letters, or what remained of them, were found almost by chance in 1998, in a little suitcase in my sister’s attic. They surprised us for the clearness and fluency of style and the dedication with which information was passed on. The first letter was sent to Sally on August 10, 1862, from Port Gibson, Mississippi, where Tom was stationed with Company D—Partizan Band of the Confederate Army under the command of Col. Hughes. The last one was written from Brookhaven on May 22, 1869. In the transcription of these letters no corrections have been made.

The small suitcase where the letters had been stored remained untouched and was passed from generation to generation until it was opened in 1998, when my sister and I were searching for documentation that could be used for a biography of Sally Strong’s grandniece, Pearl Ellis Byington, who did pioneering social work in São Paulo.

Very little is known about Sally’s life. According to information handed down from family to family, she seems to have been a very special person. She had no children of her own, but helped take care of children of others.