Autograph letter signed by Ward Kingsbury, Co. D, 16th Vermont Infantry, to his wife, [Harriet] Kingsbury. Washington, D.C., 11 March 1863. Approx. 5 pages, 8vo, with original patriotic illustrated envelope, with red 3-cent stamp and cancel. 

A letter written home to his wife by Ward Kingsbury (1800-1876) of the 16th Vermont Infantry to his wife Harriet Hart Kingsbury (1809-1895). 

Stationed near Fairfax Station, he relates the audacious capture of General Edwin H. Stoughton by John S. Mosby and his Rangers on 9 March 1863. Kingsbury writes: "I suppose you are all ready informed that the Rebels have come into our enclosure and taken our general and staff and a good many horses. This was done in a dark night. I believe on the eighth day of this month. He had ould many of his guards in to favors them and yet feeling secure. I suppose some think that he liked promotion and strong drinks together with a plenty of ladys above everything else and we must make the best of it we can. We think that the [citizens] of the place helped plot for this daring exploit and I understand that some of the citizens with the provost marshall and rested and taken to Washington for trial."

Stoughton was a rising star in the Army, the youngest colonel when he commanded the 4th Vermont Infantry in the Peninsula Campaign, he was promoted brigadier general and assumed command of the 2nd Vermont Brigade in December 1862.

On 9 March 1863, Stoughton hosted a party for his visiting mother and sister, who were staying at the home of Antonia Ford, who worked as a civilian spy for Mosby. After Soughton retired to his quarters, he was captured by Mosby himself. Allegedly, Mosby initiated the sleeping Stoughton"with a firm slap on the rear end" (Mosby's Memoirs, p. IX), followed by a quippy exchange: 

Ward Kingsbury was a Vermont farmer who enlisted on 29 August 1862 as a musician into Company D of the 16th Vermont Infantry. The summer after this letter was penned, Kingsbury and the 16th would fight at Gettysburg, repulsing Confederate assaults on Cemetery Ridge on the second day, and importantly flanking Kemper's Brigade of Virginians before they reached the copse of trees during Pickett's Charge. The cut up Kemper with close-range musketry and then moved on to strike Wilcox's Brigade of Alabamians, capturing hundreds of prisoners. 

Together, Ward and Harriet had 5 sons, 3 of whom also served in Vermont regiments. Their eldest son, Ezra Barnes Kingsbury (1831-1912), enlisted alongside his father and served in the same company. After he mustered out after Gettysburg, he re-enlisted into Co. H of the 9th Vermont Infantry in the fall of 1864, now alongside his younger brother Martin H. Kingsbury (also Company H). A third son, Merritt W. Kingsbury, enlisted in 1864 into Company E of the 5th Vermont Infantry. 

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