Thoughtfully curated historical journalism
Helen Keller, famous blind and deaf woman will arrive in Milwaukee Thursday to spend several days in making a personal appeal for the support of the American Foundation for the Blind.
Miss Keller will be accompanied by her life-long teacher, Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy.
Following the record low temperature of Monday morning, the mercury dropped rapidly again Monday evening until at midnight the thermometer registered 10 degrees below zero. In the early morning hours of Tuesday however, there was some moderation of the temperature and at 6 o’clock yesterday morning the average reported in Augusta was 6 to 8 degrees below zero.
Snow began falling about 10 o’clock Tuesday morning and continued throughout the day with increasing intensity in the afternoon and evening. With the low temperature, the storm, which was driven by a bitter wind from the northeast, made it particularly disagreeable for all who had occasion to venture forth.
The following extract is from it letter written by an officer on board the United States steamer Richmond, after the bombardment of Fort Pickens :
I went by invitation of Lieut.—— ,of the Engineers, to visit the fort. We took a circuit first of the covered way, then of the parapet and ramparts. All around the Fort, inside and out, were marks of the enemy’s shot and shell. On the glacis, here and there, were deep groves, ending in a large hole, where the shot had plumped into it, and where there bad been shell which had burst. The hole was a great excavation into which you could have driven an ox cart. Where the projectiles have struck the standing walls they have chipped off patches of the brickwork, (it is a brick and not a stone fort) perhaps eight or ten inches deep, and where they have struck the corners large portions have been removed but in no case has any part of the fortification received an injury tending in the least to weaken it, and this after two days’ heavy firing.
I have on former occasions spoken of the abuse to which the flag of truce, in spite of the utmost vigilance of the officers, was liable. I have an interesting case, and as usual, there is a woman in it illustrating the fact.
Saturday afternoon last, there came from Norfolk, two ladies, direct from Richmond, one of them from Rhode Island, whose identity was established beyond all dispute, and was accompanied by her son, released from imprisonment. The other, by the name of Baxley, was travelling on the usual pass. On the way to Old Point, she made inquiries of Capt. Millward whether she would be subject to an examination at Old Point, and as she was informed that Provost Marshal Davis, about whom she seemed anxious to know as much as possible in advance, would probably act according to circumstances she appeared slightly uneasy.
At twelve o’clock last night one of the state powder mills, that at the old United States Marine Hospital at Gretna, blew up with a report that shook the whole city to its foundation stones. A pillar of flame shot up to the sky, for an instant illuminating the whole heavens, and then came the noise and shock—too great, too sudden, too overpowering to be mistaken for anything than what it really was.
Annapolis, Monday Evening, Jan. 6, 1862.
To day the embarkation of the troops has been going forward. Several sad accidents have occurred, resulting in the death of several men, one of whom belonged to the Massachusetts twenty-third. While that regiment was waiting to embark, several members of Company C went to a saloon. Here Thomas Butler of that company was accidentally shot dead by one of his comrades named William Beecher, who was playfully going through the manual exercise with a gun not his own.