Tragic stories of love lost used to be more popular than they are now. While it might not be as satisfying to hear about a hopeless romance with a sad ending, there is a value there. A sad story can actually be encouraging. It can reveal the deepest aspects of the human spirit and the nature of love itself. Not always do things end the way we want, but certain higher qualities in a soul can be brought out by losing a great hope. Tragedy can be the field where loyalty and devotion, steadfastness in the ability to withstand difficult times, and even the deepest forms of love grow.
I found a story which, according to several Texas newspapers published in the summer of 1908, took place at Santa Anna Mountain in 1862. The tale begins in Washington County, Maryland, when two boys sign up to fight in the Confederate army. One of the soldiers, called Randle in the reports, somehow ends up on Santa Anna Mountain in 1862. We are not told why he was here, only that he was carrying a letter when he was ambushed by a group of what were likely Comanche or Kiowa, and badly wounded. In order to escape, he climbed up the mountain, where he realized he would die from his wounds. Taking out a handy pencil and paper, he wrote the following to his sweetheart back home, a woman called Maryland Bell. It says this letter was subsequently discovered many years later on Santa Anna Mountain:
Santa Anna mountain, July 1862.
Maryland Belt, Hagarstown, Maryland:
Darling Girl: — If by chance this should reach you it will make known my fate. I was attacked by Indians to-day while bearing a message and mortally wounded. Even now my life blood is trickling away on the rocks and soil of this mountain where I sought refuge from the savages. I now look for the last time on the golden sun setting behind the hills of west Texas. Tonight when the stars look down on my pale corpse you will be released from the promise made under the silver leafed aspens of the Potomac. God grant that your future may be as happy as I had planned to make it. Give my dying love to mother and tell her all. Remember me sometimes as the years roll on and meet me up yonder where cruel words and savage arrows can part us no more. Farewell! — Randle.
This letter was supposedly found 40 years later by the other soldier from Maryland, a man only identified as Nic.“One day Nic, who fought with Jackson, was strolling over Santa Anna mountains admiring the beautiful country that surrounds it. He found an old canteen and when he picked it up a roll of paper fell out held together by a gold ring. The paper proved to be a letter written with a pencil. It was well wrapped and in a good state of preservation,” the report says. It goes on to describe how Miss Maryland, who waited all those decades at home in vain for Randle to return, finally received the letter directed to her. She mourned the loss of her true love her whole life, never marrying, hoping to meet Randle once again on the other side of this life.
This story was told at a meeting of the Daughters of the Confederacy in the home of a Mrs. L V Porter of Brownwood, the article claims. Some of the elements in the account are difficult to believe. I spent quite a few hours researching Maryland Belt and searching for any reference to a Civil War soldier who died on Santa Anna Mountain. There were a lot of Belts in Washington County, Maryland, where Hagerstown is. I even found one with the middle name Maryland, but no one who could fit the bill for the dates given in the story. I do not think there is a record of anyone with the name Randle, or anyone else for that matter, having died on the mountain in this way. It’s possible that it went unrecorded, but seems unlikely to me.
Nevertheless, it’s a good story. Two young lovers separated by circumstance with a tragic result. A girl waiting most of her life for something she will never have. The tale sort of moralizes at the end about how they will meet again in heaven. Regardless of how trite or overused that conclusion might be I think there is still deep truth in it. People can lose love in a lot of ways–death, divorce, severe illnesses–but can love itself ever be truly lost? Is love greater than death, can it transcend time itself and exist beyond where we are now? In the words of Paul the Apostle, “. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Happy Valentine’s Day!
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
