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Head Quarters, Company A, 129th Ills. Vols.
Camp Near Bowling Green, Ky., Nov. 12th 1862

Dear Wife

Maples is going home this morning & will see you perhaps before my last letter reaches you.¹ I am quite well & getting along well. Write soon.

We have not recd. the election returns yet.² We are yet in Camp & do not know where or when we will go into Winter Quarters.

Give my love to all. Hoping that God will be with & bless you, I am in haste,

Your affect. Husband
J. F. Culver

1. Sheriff Maples of Livingston County, on his frequent visits to the regiment, served as a volunteer mail carrier. This was common practice. Undoubtedly the most famous mail carrier, North or South, was Absalom C. Grimes. To learn more about Civil War mail carriers, the reader is referred to Absalom Grimes: Confederate Mail Runner, edited by Milo M. Quaife (New Haven, 1926). [↩]
2. On November 4 voters had gone to the polls in most Northern states to elect representatives to Congress and to state and local offices. [↩]