N.C. pair's Civil War letters tell of love in trying times

Ann Bowen wrote her husband on Nov. 1, 1864, lamenting the Union's capture of their home town of Plymouth, N.C.

"It is trouble at heart that I write you the news," she wrote to Henry Bowen, stationed in South Carolina as a Confederate Marine. "Plymouth has fallen in the hands of the Yankees again, to my sorrow. What we are to do, Lord only knows. I expect to be stripped of nearly everything."

Before closing, she admonished Henry to write every week in case "I never see you again."

Henry and Ann Bowen did write each other often during the Christmas season of 1864, and the letters were saved and passed down through the family.

The letters are to be part of a Civil War exhibit called "Under Both Flags" that is planned for the Museum of the Albemarle in February in remembrance of the 1862 capture and subsequent Union occupation of northeastern North Carolina. The Oden family of Bath, descendants of the Bowens, donated the collection of letters to the North Carolina State Archives.

Plymouth sat along the Roanoke River and was a key location for supplies going to Gen. Robert E. Lee in Virginia. With help from the ironclad Albemarle, the Confederates retook Plymouth in April 1864. But when the Albemarle was destroyed in late October, the town and county fell again into Union hands.

In the winter of 1864, Ann was trying to watch over four children, maintain a household and run the farm. In her letters, she fretted over livestock and crops and whether enemy troops would raid the farm.

Meanwhile, stationed on a boat in Charleston, S.C., 41-year-old Henry tried to answer her questions about the farm and ease her mind. Through the hardships, the couple consistently expressed their love for each other.

On Dec. 2, Ann wrote Henry that the children were well and the potato crop was good, and asked whether she should kill the white sow for meat since it was improving from a back injury and fattening again. Cousin Penny wanted to buy the "shoat" - a young, weaned pig - but she was not sure how much to charge her in Confederate money.

Henry replied on Dec. 15 that he, too, did not know how much to charge for the shoat. One silver dollar in U.S. money is worth about $25 in Confederate money, he told her. She should kill that sow as soon it gets fatter, he said.

She told Henry of an injury to her thumb that kept her from sewing and knitting. She also went out to get firewood and dropped one of the logs on her "big toe and smashed it bad," but she was getting by.

Even though they had only been separated for two months, they both wrote about being together again and hoped he might come home for Christmas.

"I dreamed last night of being at home with you, and it revives me to think of it today," Henry wrote.

Ann returned, "And my dear, come if you can, for we have not forgot you, for it is the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning to think of you and how glad I should be to see you."

But Henry, expecting to be sent into action soon, was not able to get leave. He wrote on Dec. 25 that Christmas Day was just another day without his family.

Without having received his latest letter, Ann wrote him on Dec. 26 about how sorry she was that he did not make it home for Christmas.

But he did make it home.

Henry was at Appomattox when Lee surrendered in April 1865. Henry returned to his wife and his farm. They had eight children together and had been married 55 years when Ann died in 1903 at age 78. Henry died four years later, at 84.

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com