Correspondence
Gettysburg Pa. Friday
Mr. Melvin Church
Dear Sir:
I arrived here yesterday being Thursday and in company with a young man from N. Y. State in pursuit of his brother killed July 3 in the III Vol. also the 6th Army Corps. We took a walk to the battlefield near where I expected to find your son's grave. I looked until so dark I could not see to read any more and returned to the hotel a little disappointed in not finding it. I found the log barn and a great many graves near and about it. I should judge one half or more of the graves were marked that had not been disturbed. They seemed quite busy about the fields in moving those not marked to the National Cemetery; and on the North side of the old log barn the field has been ploughed and sown to winter wheat up even with the barn and in the evening at the hotel I saw Mr. Miram Warren the man that wrote you. He told me he could not find the grave for some of the board had not been moved since he wrote you, and we both started this morning and looked seadily until two o'clock P. M. Went out again at half past 3 o'clock and came in at 6, and I am sorry to say quite discouraged. The board is since gone either by the cattle in the field, the cemetery trams driving through or by other persons finding the board down and using it to mark other friends graves, which or how we never came to know. I am afraid; I find that (Mr. Fry) and Mr. Mann in the same business of Mr. Warren has precisely the same location and field and barn of the grave of Corporal Church and Regiment. He also tells the board has been moved or torn down somehow, and it is useless to look, but I shall go out in the morning again with Mr. Fry but have very little hopes of success and will write you again tomorrow night. There are several at this hotel that have looked the whole week in vain but they did not know the location so nearly as I do of your son's grave.
I am truly yours
J. E Foof
I am quite tired and as poor pen hope you will be able to read-
Source: Biography and letters courtesy of Doug March.
