Blount County Tenn Oct. 24th, 1865
I am now turned out in the world, worn out without anything or any place to go to I wore myself out serving my former master C. M. Gillespy. I am now old and infirm–and am turned out of doors without anything to eat or any place to sleep and am not able to work my own support. I have been a slave all my life untill I was freed by the proclamation of the president. and now getting up in years and am diseased and have been turned off without anything Consequently I am unable to support my self– I understand that the government or the authorities are doing something to relieve persons in like situation If you can do anything to releive me in my situation you will do me a lasting favor
Mary Gillespy
Mary Gillespy to Maj Gen'l Stoneman, 24 Oct. 1865, Unregistered Letters Received, series 3500, Knoxville TN Subassistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives. By an endorsement of November 4, the department commander, whose headquarters were in Knoxville, Tennessee, referred Gillespy's letter to the Freedmen's Bureau superintendent stationed in that city. No correspondence regarding the freedwoman has been found in the superintendent's letters-sent volumes.
Published in Land and Labor, 1865, p. 666.