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PRIVATE THOMAS SPENCER WILLIAMS:
Private Thomas Spencer Williams was a veteran of the Mexican-American
War Of 1846. He served from 4 JUN 1846 to 30 AUG 1846, a five month
period, with Company D, the 2nd Regiment of Tennesse Infantry. He
was 20 years old. He had signed up for a 12 month enlistment, but was
discharged for a disability on orders of the Surgeon, Colonel Haskill.
He was discharged at Camp Belnap, located across the Rio Grande River,
opposite Burita, Mexico. The first document on the left shows that
Private Williams was on a muster roll from 4 JUN 1846 to 31 OCT 1846.
This does not mean he was discharged on 31 OCT 1846. It only means that
this is the only muster copy extant. The second document on the right
shows a muster-out roll written 27 MAY 1847, which gives the information
that Private Williams was discharged on estimate of disability on 30 AUG 1846
or the next day 1 SEP 1846.
CAMP BELNAP:
Camp Belnap is located some 9 miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande
River. During the summer of 1846, Camp Belknap was home to some 8,000
soldiers, making it the single largest U.S. volunteer encampment of the
Mexican War. In addition to the men from Alabama, volunteers from
Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland and the District of Columbia,
Georgia, and Tennessee all pitched their tents at Belknap, together
enduring the heat of the South Texas summer, as well as bites, pricks
and cuts inflicted by the region's exotic flora and fauna, prompting the
universal complaint that "all the plants have thorns and all the insects
have horns." One of the Indiana men, Benjamin Franklin Scribner, in a
letter addressed to his folks back home, included this description of
Camp Belknap:
Our encampment is beautifully situated upon a grassy ridge,
bounded in front by the Rio Grande, opposite Barita, and in the
rear by a vast plain bedecked with little salt lakes. Now if you
think this is a romantic spot...you need only imagine us trudging
through a swamp, lugging our mouldy crackers and fat bacon...to
become convinced that this is not a visionary abode, but stern reality.
Burita, the town opposite Camp Belknap, as described by Samuel C.
Reid, indicated it was nothing much to look at either:
...the little town of Barita...is the first settlement after
you leave the mouth (of the Rio Grande). It is nothing more...than
a miserable rancho, composed of some fifty huts, made of logs, mud
and cane...and several of the huts contained Mexican families of the
lowest class.
Stephen Nunnalee later recalled that he and his fellow-soldiers
"enjoyed the change (from Brazos Island to Camp Belknap) very much
for a week or two." But, he also remembered, "the water and only
hard tack and bacon soon caused almost an epidemic of diarrhoea,
and many deaths occurred." As a result, Nunnalee wrote, "discontent
and homesickness" pervaded the camp, and "no attempt [was made] to
instruct the men in military exercises." During this time, Nunnalee
recalled, he and his comrades "discovered by putting a few slices of
cactus leaf in our water that it soon became clear and palatable."
But, he wrote, "sickness continued, little attention being paid to
sanitary conditions."
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