Letter from John Houston Ligget(t)
16th Iowa Infantry

Letter from John Houston Ligget(t) (age 35 at the time), 16^th Iowa Infantry, Company H, camped near Beaufort, S.C., to his younger brother Thomas Alexander Liggett (age 33 at the time) in Morrow County, Ohio

Date of letter: January 31, 1865

I am attempting to represent this letter verbatim and as spelled and punctuated in the actual letter. I have inserted some sentence breaks for some relief in reading.

"In the field January 31^st 1865

Thomas – I received a letter from you & one from mother last night and was glad to hear from you. I am now sitting a bout 30 miles in the rear of Charleston in the woods writing and the men is all a round me so I have a poor chance to write. You wanted to know what you should do if you was drafted. I can’t tell what you had better do but I can tell you what I would do if I was drafted again. There hante [‘ain’t’] money enough in Amerrica to hire me to serve a nother year and there is not men enough in the north to force me in alive. If I live to git home I never will bee a soldier again. There is a great deel to see & learn but it is a dear school and fools cant learn in any other. Now Thomas nine tenths of our officers is men and buoys hat has tride to make a living with out work such as one horse doctors & one horse lawyers [note: John later had one brother and two brothers-in-law who were doctors] and they don’t care for any boddy so they git plenty of whiskey and they don’t know how to treat man or beast. Now I will tell you what kind of trip I had last week. Our regiment was orded to go ten miles to a boat landing as a gard for that place & wee started in the morning, traviled till a bout two o’clock and then it was the rong place. So wee went back five miles and camped mud to the hips and it rained all the time. So next morning started and went back to with in a mile of our old camt [‘camp’] and then took a nother road and arived at the landing at four in the eavning still raning and then I was detailed with five others to go back with the teames. So we went back to the old camp ariving a bout nine in the evning without tents & nothing to eat. So we set round a fire the rest of the night and it raning hard all the time. In the morning wee loaded our teames & started for camp a riving two in the after noon after traveling over forty eight hours as ever in mud up to the tops of your boots and waid streames to the hips & raning hard half of the time. All this with out any thing to eat and plenty of grub in the waggons but not time to issue them out. Now Thomas if you think you can stand sich hardships you will make a soldier. If not stay out if you can. A mans life is no more than a young chickens in the spring. I have bin well all the time and I hav good health at present. Write ofton. Don’twait for me as I don’t know where I will will bee and hav a verry poor chance to write. Wee are on a march now but don’t know where wee are a gowing but wee think that wee are a gowing to cut the Weldon railroad in the rear of Charleston. So look out for some thing in that way.

"Well Thomas our regment is in the Third Brigade Bell knap Commanding Fourth division Giles A Smith Commanding 17 Corps H. P. Blair Commanding. Now when this part of the armey is in battle count mee in. Direct to Co. H.

16 Iowa Infantry

17 Armey Corps

Beaufort South Carolina

Via New York

Yours J H Ligget " 

 An 1886 record indicated that John Ligget(t) (spelled ‘Leggett’, there actually) was living in Hawleyville, Page Co., Iowa. He died on March 26, 1915.

Contributed by:

Back to the 16th Infantry Home Page

(Send this page to a Friend)     ( Roster Photo's )

If you have any additional information that you would like to add to this page or other pages and share with

visitors of on this web site, please contact