Hairston, Peter Wilson, 1819-1886
Page 1
Chapel
Hill
February 3d 1835
My dear
Grand
Mother
Although the time since I saw you has been very short, yet the
anxiety of hearing from you and Grand Pa
2 has
prompted me to write you a few lines. I suppose you will hear before this
reaches you of the melancholy circumstance of the death of our venerable
President
Joseph Caldwell
3 who expired on tuesday last the 27
th of
January with the disease of which he has been afflicted for many years past.
4 In my opion there is no man who can fill this office in the
manner in which he has. He bought a bell that can be heard three or four miles
at his own expense for the use of the
College and had various other improvements made upon
the buildings for which he never was refunded.
I apply myself to my studies as well as my
Page 2
health will permit as I have been plauged
continually with the head ache ever since I have been in this place.
I set in my window one night in last week and heard a fox chase,
they caught the Fox.
5 But he lives eight or ten miles from this place. Write to me
soon.
Give my Love to Grand Pa and Aunt Charity and receive the same
from your
Envelope page
Endnotes:
1.
Wilson and Hairston Family Papers, SHC. The letter is addressed
to "
Mrs Ruth S Hairston/
Dick,s store/
Henry
County/
Virginia." Though it has been stamped with a circular
postmark in the upper left corner, the date is too faint to read. The amount of
postage, "12 1/2" cents, has been superimposed in ink on the same
amount written in pencil in the upper right corner. Someone also has written in
pencil in the lower left corner "Mail" and at the top center of the
envelope face "Single."
2. Probably
Robert
Hairston (1783-1852).
3.
Hairston
wrote "Joseph Caldwell" on top of
Caldwell.
4. Sources claim that in about 1829
Caldwell
contracted a "chronic disease,"
apparently kidney stones. In 1833 he visited doctors in
Philadelphia, who pronounced the disease incurable and
"advised against lithotomy" (
Battle 1:353), surgery to remove the
stones from the bladder. Professor
Walker
Anderson
, euologizing
Caldwell
during the 1835 Commencement describes the last
three days of
Caldwell's
life: "By the exercise of prayers and
other acts of the holy religion he professed, he strengthened himself for the
last conflict, and spoke words of consolation and hope to his sorrowing
friends. But death was yet to be indulged with a brief triumph, and for three
days his sufferings were protracted with such intensity that his vigorous and
well-balanced mind sank beneath the contest" (
Battle 1:416).
5.
Hairston
capitalized
Fox after
writing
fox.
6. According to
Battle
,
Caldwell's
body was first buried in the village cemetery,
then was exhumed in November 1835 so that
Alfred
S. Waugh, an artist, could cast
Caldwell's
features in plaster to make a bust. On October
31, 1846,
Caldwell
was reinterred beside his wife near
Person
Hall and a monument was erected in honor of both
Joseph
and
Helen Hooper
Caldwell
. On June 2, 1858, a new monument was dedicated, and on August
19, 1876,
William Hooper
,
Helen Hooper
Caldwell's
son, was interred next to his mother (Battle 1:
414,
503,
692).