Page 110 - Arkansas Confederate Women

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HUSBAND KILLED AT SHILOH.

By Mrs. Anna Mitchell, of Havana.

My husband and oldest brother joined the Tenth Arkansas

Eegiment near Quitman. C. R. Merrick was colonel and Witt

(afterward colonel) and W. W. Martin of Conway were cap-
tains. The regiment camped near home two or three weeks

and we felt so proud of them. We made our men red shirts,

trimmed with black, and with white thread worked in "Quit-

man Rifles." We covered their canteens the same way. I

remembered covering one for Bob Bertrand of Little Rock.

PROMISED TO "WHIP THE YANKEES."

Our boys promised us that they would whip the Yankees

right away and then come home and we would all have a fine

time. We believed every word they said, and, loath as we were

to give them up, we spoke our farewells bravely and waved in

Wejoy our little flags. waited many a long day for their

return

WOMEN PLOWING.
My father had a large family, and the only one able to
work, my oldest brother, had joined the army. We had a hard
time to keep body and soul together. The women plowed the
field and planted and cultivated the corn. Some women had to

walk five miles to a mill to get meal for their sack of corn, and
frequently there was no meal, nothing but bran, which they
cooked and ate.

It was a common sight on the road to the mill to see two
women on either side of a yearling calf that was harnessed to

the front or rear part of a wagon, with a small load of corn or

wheat. Each woman held a line from the head of the yearling,

and the work of the day was to induce the yearling to walk
forward and not backward.

SPINNING AND WEAVING.
Mother and myself never knew one day what we would have