Josephine Lowell – extracts on the Greene family

William Rhinelander Stewart. The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell. New York: Macmillan, 1911.

[page 13] I know a great many men in the army who are: My brother, and first cousin, H. S. Russell, in Gordon’s Regiment (2d Mass. Vol.), Capt. Curtis, Lieut. Motley, Lieut. Morse, Capt. Tucker, Lieut. Bangs, Lieut. Robson in the same Regiment; Joe and Ned Curtis, the former belonging to the Ninth Regiment, N. Y., the latter, a surgeon in the Georgetown Hospital. My cousin, Harry Sturgis, in Raymond Lee’s Mass. Regiment. My uncle, William Greene, Colonel of the 14th Mass.; Dr. Elliott and his three sons of the Highland Regiment; Capt. Lowell of the U. S. A., and Theodore Winthrop, who died for his country at Great Bethel, June 10th, 1861. Also, Rufus Delafield, a surgeon U. S. A. Twenty brave men,—nineteen living and one dead.—O. Wendell Holmes, Caspar Crowninshield.

[pages 20-21] October 3d, 1861. Everything goes on as usual. We have no battle yet, although September has passed, the month in which they were to take place. The weakness of the Rebels is shown, I should think, by that one fact and they keep having doleful accounts of the condition of their army. Uncle William Greene says that “Peace will come upon us like a river.” Would to God it might.

[page 70]

Feb. 25, ’94.

DEAREST ANNIE :

I wonder if you are much disturbed about the bomb-throwers? What a crazy, dreadful set of creatures, and how all the newspaper talk only serves to set off some other lunatic to do the same thing. Certainly the modern newspaper is a very “mixed good.” The view a reporter takes of things is generally the wrong view, but it helps to make public opinion. Well, there’s no use talking about it—only I am glad you and Aunt Anna Greene do not take your dinner at a café.

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