The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 65, July 1961 - April, 1962 Page: 460

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Texana in view of the publication in the October, 1961, Quarterly
of an article on "Early Norwegians in Northeast Texas."
DORMAN H. WINFREY
University of Texas
Batchelor-Turner Letters 186z-z864: Written by Two of Terry's
Texas Rangers. Annotated by H. J. H. Rugeley. Austin (pri-
vately printed), 1961. Pp. xi+99. Illustrations, index. $3.50.
Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Batchelor and Private George
Quincy Turner of Company C, Terry's Texas Rangers (8th Texas
Confederate Cavalry), were related through Frank's marriage to
George's sister, Julia Amanda Turner. During the Civil War both
men wrote Julia and her parents Amasa and Julia Morse Turner
in Lavaca County, Texas. Their correspondence, with a few addi-
tional letters from other members of the family and friends,
covers the period December, 1861, to November, 1864. Both
cavalrymen died as a result of the conflict: George of disease in
March, 1864, and Frank from a wound received in the heavy
skirmishing near Coosaville, Georgia, in October, 1864. Although
each by the other's statements appears to have been a steady
soldier, the brothers-in-law were of somewhat different tempera-
ment. George, a man rather romantic by nature, preferred to
enjoy the scenery of Tennessee and Georgia and to write poetry
to young ladies when away from the fighting front. Frank, who
rose from sergeant to acting captain, was an extremely patriotic,
outspoken enemy of all Northerners. Yet both men paid tribute
to northern troops as sturdy soldiers organized into a powerful
and energetic army.
Frank gives a vivid account of the battle of Woodsonville fought
in December, 1861, where Colonel Benjamin F. Terry of the
Rangers was killed. The combined correspondence for 1862, taken
in chronological order, then recounts the retreat from Bowling
Green, Kentucky, to Nashville, Tennessee, events of the Union
advance on Corinth, Mississippi, after the battle of Shiloh, the
Perryville campaign, and skirmishing between Nashville and
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in the winter of 1862. The letters for
1863 cover the battle of Murfreesboro, a raid on Fort Donelson
in February, 1863, rear guard action during the Tullahoma cam-

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