My Dear Friend : The Civil War Letters of Alva Benjamin Spencer, 3rd Georgia Regiment, Company C
Alva B. Spencer takes you through his personal experiences of grief, love, and the basic humility of things he was forced to do in time of war.
Alva, who embraced the Baptist faith at a young age, graduated from Mercer University in Penfield, Georgia, and traveled some 175 miles by a “two wheeled buggy” to teach in Dooly County, Georgia. Soon after, Alva entered the Confederate Army at the start of the war enlisting as a private in Company C of the 3rd Regiment Georgia Volunteer Infantry, leaving behind his good friend Margaret Lucinda Cone.
This story is more than the Civil War; it is a developing love story. Alva and Margaret correspond from the very beginning. At first it appears they are just friends, but soon one senses there was something more to the relationship before the war.
Spencer’s letters carry us through the whole experience, from being wounded at South Mills, North Carolina, to the “Chicimocomico Races” on Roanoke Island to collecting seashells at Nags Head, and the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Join Alva in a journey through his letters to his beloved “Maggie.”