The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-12-23
BREVET WAR WIDOWS.
WHY THERE ARE SO MANY OLD
MAIDS BETWEEN 40 AND 55.
Soldiers SIveetheartS-A Touching
Story-Waitine fos Lovers Who
Never Game Bacls-AII Honor to
the Brevet War widows.

| ] can remember 1T as distinctly as II
it all happened yesterday, though | was
only a child of eight at the time; indeed
if 1 should live to be eighty, 1 think the
departure of the soldiers for the front
in the summer of 1861 must ever remain
among my most vivid recollections.
Such scenes became very familiar as
the years of carnage went on, but this
particular occasion impressed me, be-
cause it was the last time 1 ever saw
my father. I recall him as tall man OF
tfirtyfive. looking particularly hand
some in his blue and gold captain S
/ uniform, There were tears in his eyes
when he kissed me goodbye, and when
he held my young mother ana my oaoy
sister in his arms, with mis- bearded
face beJtween theirs, the scene swan be-
| fore my brimm4ng eyes, and my lips
were hot and my throat so lumpy and
dry that I could not cry out, as I much
wanted to do.
And there was Jennie Somers, my
mothers pretty cousin-I think her pref
~ still, Though the sweet face has pain
lines in it, and the Wavy brown hair
has changed to gray-Cousin Jennie was
engaged to Frank Edwards, a sergeant
in fathers company, and l remember
seeing the two with their hands inter-
locked, while cheering troops were
pouring into the waiting cars that were
TO hurry them to the red fields of death
! in the South.
! My. father fell before Richmond, and
his is one of thu unknown and I'M
marked graves. Frank Edwards sue
ceeded to the command, and he, too,
died with the cheers of his men ringing
in his ears from the captured creSts of
Lookout Mountain.
/ From the hour when the bullet that
! Sew my father - Seven Pines flew oy-
er rivers and hills till ii reached our
home in Montg m ry county and found
its final resting place in my mothers
heart, she wore back till wear no,
when she changed the widows weed for
/ the white robes of i9lmortan,y An
Jennie Somers, she is single still; peo-
pie do not speak Of her as ''She widow
OF a gallant soldier as they did of my
mother, yet she is as much one as if
she had bsen Frank Edwards wife.
Only a few weeks ago I p lssed her win
dow, I saw her looking at the picture of
a handsome young soldier, and raised
my hat without her seeing me, for [
knew as we'll as herself the change that
would have come to her life had the
original of that picture lived.
Years and years ago the case of Jen-
ME SOmerS, no one uncommon one III
the North and South, set me thinking,
and in my travels / was surprised at
the number Of unmarried women of her
age that ] met. These are women who
would have married, had not the war
killed off on both sides about five hun
bred thousand single men.
Look over the last census report and
you will be surprised to see that che
number of unmarried women between
the ages of forty-five and fifty-fve, cor
responds very near.y with the numner
of unmarried m IN who fell in the war.
These women were either engaged to
the men who never came back, or in
the usual course of events they would
have been engaged, and SO l have come
To call them-and I think the name
good one .Brevet War Widows"
Far be it from me to underestimate
the valor and the heroic suffering of
the America sclaier in that long ami
bloody contest, but think that in con-
tenplating what was done and endured
on battlefield and in prison pen by the
men, we are apt to overlook the heroic
patience and the ceaseless heart torture
of the mothers, the wives. and the
sweethearts whose dear ones had gone
to the war. and of the long subsequent
suffering of the widows-real and bra
vet
When a great Lastla was ,ver. the
roll call accounted for the present ala
the absent. but thece ware no 'uarniag
and evening II, .,ili;s s,r ne y omen
of the land. They head If Iier..e tat-
ties, and the dread 4isl. WIS never .,b-
sent deepened into a feeling of horror.