Thursday, Aug 25 1864

I called this morning upon Mrs. Gates found her very much depressed on account of the death of her son Charles B. Gates.

Mrs. Dawes is so much better that I concluded to come home, which I did on the 11” o’clock train.  Col. Dawes & wife coming with me.  Mr. William Faris whose foot was crushed at the time of the collision near Athens and who is still obliged to walk on crutches came down on the train to see brother William.  He staid to dinner.  The Colonel & his lady went on the hill gunning.  Little Sarah has been at her Grandmother’s since yesterday.  James Carlin came on the afternoon train from the Parkersburg hospital to see his sister.  He seemed perfectly charmed with Rufus, listening eagerly to the stories of battles which Rufus knows so well how to tell.  James Carlin went to Mr. Burgesses to spend the night.

Rufus was telling an incident which struck me.  If I remember right it was on this wise.  At the battle of Spotsylvania some of our line were out flanked and many of them captured, to avoid which a number of the union soldiers under a heavy fire from the enemy ran some rods across an angle to our lines.  Rufus said it was terribly exciting to watch the poor fellows run the gauntlet so few of who came out unscathed.  One man fell desperately wounded near our lines & Rufus called for volunteers to bring him in, but he died just as he was laid down within our lines.  Rufus said as he was examining his pocket book to find his name a soldier approaching told him it was William P. Dawes, that four of their brothers & cousins had volunteered in Wisconsin, two were killed at the battle  of the Wilderness, the third lay dead before them & he alone was left. -- During the siege of Petersburg one day when Rufus was Officer of the day and going his rounds he came upon some soldiers digging a grave, there had been a reconoisance in which several were wounded and one man killed.  As he returned from his rounds the grave was filled & a little board set up bearing the dead soldiers’ name -- he stopped to read it -- it was the last of the Dawes’s!”