Mary Gresham’s grief over invalid son’s death echoes from 1865

[Draggingtree]

Mary Gresham’s grief over invalid son’s death echoes from 1865

By Michael E. Ruane August 4 at 9:32 PM

Mary Baxter Gresham was 42 when her invalid son, LeRoy, died in June 1865.

 

She had already lost two infant children and had just lived through the upheaval of the Civil War in Macon, Ga.

 

But when 17-year-old LeRoy, know as “Loy,” died on June 18 in the house where he was born, she was devastated.

 

“God has tried me often and in many ways but never has my heart been so wrung as now,” she wrote to her sister, Sallie, on July 12.

 

“And yet the trial had so much mercy mixed with it that my soul swells within me when I think it all over.”

 

Last week, Mary Gresham’s moving letter was posted online by the Library of Congress, along with her son’s extraordinary seven-volume, five-year journal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/library-of-congress-posts-mothers-letter-over-invalid-sons-1865-death-and-his-diary/2014/08/04/86f384fa-1beb-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html?tid=pm_local_pop