DESCRIPTION: A four-page family letter, combining a lengthy note from a sister ("Lizzie") with a shorter continuation from the soldier's mother, written from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and dated December 31, 1861, to "Private John Snow," care of Capt. Lumsden, Co. F Light Artillery Battalion, at Mobile. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope with period docketing.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: John Snow served in Lumsden's Battery (Company F, 2nd Alabama Light Artillery Battalion), organized at Tuscaloosa on November 29, 1861, and recruited largely from Fayette, Pickens, and Tuscaloosa counties before reporting to Mobile that same month. This letter was written just a month after the battery's formation, and its details align closely with the unit's known history — the "Cribbs" mentioned as a courier for care packages corresponds to Lt. Harvey H. Cribbs, who had resigned as Tuscaloosa County sheriff to help raise the company, and "Mr. Brown," who carried letters back and forth, likely corresponds to courier Wick Brown, both documented in the regimental history.

CONTENT: An unusually rich homefront letter blending domestic and military detail. The sister's letter covers church choir gossip, a young man's accidental self-inflicted shooting death, and warnings about a scabies ("the itch") outbreak circulating among prisoners and "cadets," with instruction to bathe frequently to avoid contagion. She discusses a stabbing among guarded prisoners, a prisoner death, and practical advice on soldier's pay (eleven dollars a month) and uniform photographs. The mother's letter, written on the same sheet, adds an anxious note on wartime conditions in north Alabama: a report that a Union regiment has moved into the region intending to free Confederate-held prisoners, with a local company in Fayette said to be ready "to help Lincoln," closing with the stark admission that the area is "in a bad fix, no powder or scarce" — a rare, candid window into Confederate homefront vulnerability in the war's opening winter.

CONDITION: Expected folds and toning; legible throughout. Envelope shows wear consistent with period mailing.  [ss][ph:L]

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