Dear Sister,

The mail came aboard this morning bringing with it your letter, several papers, and also a letter and paper from Jamie Stewart. Your letter brings me the sad intelligence of the death of Mrs. Kendall. I am exceedingly surprised and pained to hear it. It will be a terrible blow to her excellent husband as well as to the Church. I do not know how the Church will be able to get along without her. One by one my friends and acquaintances are dropping away and many of those whom I once knew, and whose faces are familiar to me, will be laid low in the dust before I return. If it pleases God that I should, I ought indeed to be thankful to God for having preserved my life through so may dangers and for the many mercies he has bestowed on me.

I told John Fox about the shoes and stockings. He received a letter from home a short time since telling him to be on the lookout for them. You need not mind about my shoes. I’d rather do without, than send for anything when I know you need the money so bad, besides, my shoes are pretty good. The weather is fine, but the nights are rather chilly. You wish to know “how I am”. I am very well. This morning after receiving my letters, etc., I laid them on the mess chest. Bo’suns mate coming along said, “Helloa Father Kemp (that’s the name I go by) are they all yours?” “Yes”, said I. “You must have a good many friends. I suppose that’s the reason why you’re never sick”, said he. You may judge from this what sort of health I’ve got. I am in good health. God grant that I may continue so.

The “big scare” I mentioned in my last letter turns out to be something after all. It is reported that the ram “Queen of the West” and the gunboat, Indianola captured fifteen transports near the mouth of the Red River (I don’t know how true this is, one report says 12 and another only one) they were attacked by three gunboats which came out of the Red River, but the Indianola succeeded in driving them back. The ram ran aground on some bar and had to be burned and blown up to keep her from falling into the hands of the rebels. I have forgotten to tell you that we are lying in the mouth of the Yazoo at our old place.

The Gunboat Lafayette is expected here soon. Jimmy Stewart says when I see it I ‘ll see “a gunboat as is a gunboat”.

Yesterday was Washington’s Birthday. It was celebrated throughout the fleet by firing a salute of twenty one guns by each gunboat. What sort of a celebration did you have in Buffalo? When we fired our salute, every pane of glass almost in our forward and skylight was broken. The shock caused our boat to again spring a leak in the spot where we were struck at Fort Hindman, which has been temporarily mended. I said in one of my letters that I thought our boat needed repairs before we could go to Vicksburg. When we were coming from the White River to the Yazoo, our boat was nearly swamped in passing Napoleon. The Mississippi is almost as wide as a small lake. The wind was blowing a perfect hurricane and the water came over the bow into three lockers on the forecastle and flooded the bread locker and foreman’s room, destroying a large quantity of hard bread. We had to run ashore and tie up to the banks and then fix our bow with boards and canvas in order to keep the water out before we could proceed on our way. I forgot to mention this before. I do it now to show how much she needs repairs. But I have exhausted any store of news. I merely wrote this letter to answer yours and keep you from being troubled about me. Give my respects to the Johnstons, Turners and other Buffalo friends. Don’t forget to write often to your

Affectionate Brother,

Daniel

• Introduction
• Biography
• Family and Friends

• Port Arkansas
• Sinking of the Cincinnati

• November 14, 1927
• Reminiscences

Your Affectionate Son by Silberger, Kathryn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

INDEX OF LETTERS