The Bixby Letter

[Steve]

I thought I'd add something that as far as I can tell, isn't available online. It's a photo of the March 28, 1865 letter from Lt. Col. Gardiner Tufts to the Massachusetts Surgeon General concerning the death of son George Way Bixby of B co. 56th Massachusetts Infantry at Salisbury Prison. The original was photographed from Tufts' letterbook at the Mass. State Archives in Boston. If you can't make out what it says, there's a transcription of the main body of the letter here in F. Lauriston Bullard's book Abraham Lincoln and the Widow Bixby on Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/stream/abrahamlincol...0/mode/2up

One thing needs to be clarified about Bullard's description, the "visitor" mentioned in Tuft's letter is his subordinate who went to Camp Parole in Annapolis to ask paroled/exchanged Union soldiers about the fates of Massachusetts soldiers who were POWs. It looks like some of the details were distorted by the time Tuft's people took down the information - Mrs. Bixby lived at 15 Dover Street Place (present day Fay Street), not no. 115. Lt. J.B. Davis is Lt. John J. Davis of B co. 56th Mass. who was discharged a few months before George was captured. I have no idea who 1SG Jacobs is supposed to be, there's nobody in George's company with that name.