Dear Group, I thought I'd better post this before I faded into the sunset this evening--and/or before the men in the little white coats come to haul me off! In 1993 I wrote a book based on the history of the Town of Porter. It was designed to appeal to fourth-graders to give them an appreciation for our local history. It was more of a story book rather than a history book. The book continues to be used by local fourth-grade teachers in their teaching of local history. As I mentioned in my last message, this is the first chapter. vee GRANDPA MCCOLLUM AND HIS BROTHER MELVILLE Virginia plunked herself down on her bed and declared, "I won't ever forget this day. I'll never forget one single minute of it. I just want to lie on my bed and be by myself. I think Mother understands how I feel right now. I feel--well--so LOST !" Her upstairs bedroom was hot. She noticed that the windows were closed and she slithered herself off the bed long enough to open them to the fresh breeze. The lace curtains billowed out like sails into the room bringing with them the hot summer smells of the farm. Planted firmly back on her bed once again, she announced to herself dramatically, "Today, here in the Town of Porter, the County of Niagara and the State of New York, on the twelfth day of August in the year of our Lord 1912, they buried Grandpa McCollum. His name was Abram Madison McCollum." Then as if to explain to her unseen audience, "Well, he wasn't really my grandfather, but I miss him just as if he had been." It was understandable. He was her hero and her special friend. Everyone around here knew him and almost everyone called him Grandpa McCollum. She thought he was the most famous person in the world. He had fought in the Civil War and she knew he had been a brave soldier. He had told her about how he and HUNDREDS of other men from Niagara County had joined the Union Army. He spoke slowly and with great pride in his voice as he said, "I was a member of Company F of the Eighth Regiment New York State Heavy Artillery commanded by Colonel Peter A. Porter." The way he said it made her wish she could have joined it too. Her thoughts filled her mind as she propped her pillows up and leaned back. "I remember when Grandpa McCollum told me how he had been wounded at the Battle of Cold Harbor outside of Richmond, Virginia, the same day that his brave colonel was killed. (He always used to call Colonel Porter by that name, 'My brave colonel.') I think it's nice that they brought his brave Colonel Porter back home and buried him right near here up in Niagara Falls. I know it pleased Grandpa." Virginia hoped that one day she could visit his grave in Oakwood Cemetery on Portage Road. She continued to recall the story: "That battle took place way back in 1864, almost fifty years ago, but Grandpa McCollum remembered it just like it was yesterday." Grandpa had said, "I was only twenty-two years old when the battle took place. At dawn on June 3, 1864, the signal guns were fired and our troops rushed all at once toward the Confederate lines. I could hear our cannons booming behind us and then the Confederate cannons up ahead began firing back. As we closed in on the enemy, they opened up their rifle fire and the last thing I recall was the sight of all those rifles going off at once. It was like a sheet of flame. I felt the pain in my arm where I had been hit, and then I felt nothing as I fell to the ground unconscious. "When I regained consciousness, the battle was over and I found myself lying on the muddy battlefield too weak to move. I didn't know it then but I had been lying there from Friday until Sunday. They had left me for dead. I was choking for a drink of water, and a soldier passing by heard my cries. He filled his hat with muddy water and brought it to me. It was the best drink of water I have ever had! "They took me to a field hospital and bandaged my wounds as best they could and then they took me by ambulance to White House Landing. What had happened to me was that I had been hit in the left arm near the top of my shoulder. The Minie ball--that's a bullet, you know--passed upward through my shoulder cap and continued out the top of my shoulder where it then entered my head just behind my left ear and shattered the bone. There was nothing they could do about my arm and so they had to amputate it. Four days later at Fairfax Seminary Hospital they finally removed the Minie ball from my head." Every time Virginia remembered that part of his story it gave her goose bumps. "I still shiver when I think about it," she said. She tried to see if she could really shiver there in her still-stuffy room. She couldn't. She glanced around the room, deep in thought, and realized she had neglected to remove her shoes before climbing up on the bed which was covered with a light patchwork quilt that her mother had made. She hurriedly brushed the dirt crumbs off the quilt and as quickly as she could, she unbuttoned her high-top shoes. She slipped them off, wiggled her toes and let her thoughts continue. She knew Grandpa's head wound had always bothered him. Even though the doctors had removed the bullet and some of the shattered bone fragments, it never quite healed. She noticed that his wife Almira had to change the dressing more frequently lately, soaking the bandages with peroxide. Virginia's mother told her that the cause of his death just a couple of days ago was the head wound he had received over forty-eight years before. He had suffered a long, long time. Poor Grandpa. He didn't like to talk about what happened to him and he didn't like to talk about what happened to his younger brother Melville during the Civil War, either. But bit by bit she heard the whole story. "Melville was in the same company as I was," he told her, "and just a few months after I was wounded, our company fought in the Battle of Ream's Station in Virginia. Our Union soldiers lost the battle and Melville was one of the soldiers captured by the Confederates. They first took him to a prison in Richmond but within two weeks he became sick from the little food that he had to eat there and they had to send him to nearby Belle Isle Hospital for care. What food there was there was barely enough to keep him alive and less than a month later they sent him to Salisbury Prison in Wilmington, North Carolina. That was in October 1864. "The prison was so crowded that the prisoners had to live outdoors all the time and there was never enough food for them to eat. By January 1865 Melville had gotten weaker and weaker. But there was one last hope for him. It was at that time that both the Confederacy and the Union agreed to exchange the prisoners they had captured. And Melville was one of the ones set free--he was on his way home! But he never got any further than Wilmington. He was too weak and he died of starvation there." Grandpa had ended the story with a sigh and said sadly, "And my brother was only eighteen years old." (Sigh!) She remembered once that he added on to the story. He said, "But Melville wasn't the only boy I knew who died as a result of being in that same prison. Old Will Perry's son Ed died there too around the same time. You know the Perry family. They live down this here Balmer Road right on the corner of Creek Road. Some say Ed's father Will was the first baby to be born in these parts after the general settlement began. I think it was 1811. Yep, he was born in 1811." His eyes turned sad again and all he said then was, "Yep, I knew his boy Ed real well, I did." Virginia gave a deep sigh and got up and walked slowly over to the window. She stared out over the apple orchard that stretched between their farm and Grandpa's farm next door. "Yep, I knew Grandpa real well too, I did," she said sadly.