Carthage, Miss., Aug. 15th, 1892—

Mr. and Mrs. Bill Arp:

My not knowing your true name and as I wish to include that noble southern matron, Mrs. Arp, I take the liberty of addressing you both.

For years Arp’s letters, in Atlanta Weekly Constitution, have been the admiration of my family. I valued them for the congeniality of thought, wit and humor, I remembered in my dear father. Though death removed him, in my eleventh year my memory of his brilliant intellect has never grown dim. In your August 9th letter, you speak of old Cassville being in your county. My father was born there. I roamed over the hills with Indians hunting, and fishing in its loved waters when a school boy.

Sometime in the early years of this country my grandfather, E. Quarles moved his wife and negroes from Carolina, selected the future site of Cassville, for his home. He hauled his merchandise from Augusta and Savannah, to trade to the Indians for gold dust, taking the crude gold to Charleston to exchange for money. There was many rich Cherokees. He was popular, and his trade large. Other settlers moved near, and he built a barn and flour mill, tannery and shoe shop, raised tobacco, wheat, corn and fine horses. He sold Cassville to William Green, esq., an Indian agent (who afterward assisted in removing the Indians) and moved to this plantation nine miles from Cassville.

My father, William Quarles, left Cassville in his 20th year, went to Tuscaloosa, Ala., and married my mother a daughter of Maj. (war of 1812) Ben Green, a distinguished South Carolinian, in 1838. My grandfather Quarles moved his family to Arkansas, leaving his eldest son David Quarles (who married a Miss Katie Shaw) at the old home plantation.

I think it was 1854, or 1855, that my Uncle David Quarles, pursued a man that had killed a friend, captured him in Texas, sent him by water, to New Orleans. Hurried through by land, and paid a visit to mother and myself in Arkansas. He was accompanied by his wife’s brother Mr. Alex Shaw. Both were then residents of Cass county, Ga. I have not heard from my uncle’s family since before the war. I think he had four daughters, no sons.

I never lived near, and knew little of my father’s family, my mother died and all the above information came to me in scraps of the memory drawn from different sources, old letters and papers. Every one I knew of is dead, “Lang Lyne,” and I am the only one living of my branch. My husband is the only living one of his family.

We have a little girl nine years old, (all our other children “sleep low in the ground”) who is a very intelligent reader and a great admirer of yours. She says you love children, and know everybody in Georgia, and will understand, how lonesome it is, for her to go to Carthage high school, where all the children have so many kindred, and some get letters, and she has none, to care for her. She is very sure you will write to us, and tell us who our cousins married; and if their mother is living, and where to direct a letter to some one of them. She is sure you will write, if I will tell Mrs. Arp that her papa double quicked two miles and fought as hard as he could to keep Ben Harrison away from Cassville, and was in all the fights Gens. Hood and Johnston told him to go in. And his last best truest friends were killed by his side, defending Atlanta and it didn’t scare him a bit. But when papa surrendered at Goldsboro, N. C., and came home almost by himself, and everything gone, if it had not been for mama, his heart would have broken. I write her words verbatim. See what queer scraps children gather when old confederates fight their battles over. If you know the address of any of David Quarles family any information will be gratefully received. I enclose a stamp.

Yours respectfully,

Mrs. Sallie D. Burrell.