Information Sheet

 

 

R         Mead, Nathaniel, 1824-1863.

193                  Letters, 1862.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

These are two Civil War letters written by Nathaniel Mead while serving in the 30th Mis­souri Infantry at St. Louis and Pilot Knob.  The letters are addressed to Mead’s wife in Perry County, Missouri, and consist of inquiries after family and friends.  There are only a few items of camp news.

 

Nathaniel Mead was born in Roane County, Virginia (now West Virginia), in 1824.  By the time of the Civil War he was living in Perry County, Missouri, where he enlisted in the 30th Mis­souri Vol­unteer Infantry on 9 September 1862.  After its organization at St. Louis, the regi­ment served in southeastern Missouri at Cape Girardeau, Patterson, and Pilot Knob until De­cember 1862.  Transferred to Helena, Arkansas, late that month, it was then assigned to Gen. Wil­liam T. Sherman’s army operating against Vicksburg.  Mead never made it that far, dying of disease at Memphis on 28 March 1863.  It may have been the “Chills and yallow jondice,” mentioned in his letter from Pilot Knob, which killed him.

 

Mead’s letters were found in the pension files of the papers of U.S. Representative Charles E. Kiefner.  They had been submitted as support for a pension claim filed by Mead’s daughter in 1930.  They were transferred from the Kiefner papers when that collection was ar­ranged and cata­loged.  For additional information on Mary Ellen Meade (Mrs. Andrew Cook), see the pen­sion files in the Charles E. Kiefner Papers, Collection #R189.

 

 

 

 

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