Elizabeth Vass Wilkerson
After receiving his commission in the 27th Virginia Infantry in 1862, Chaplain Lachlan C. Vass of the Stonewall Brigade ministered to the troops in battles such as the Battle of Monocacy, MD as seen in his extensive list of dead and wounded. 1865 found Rev. Vass in Petersburg during what would be the last days of the War Between the States. After the Civil War ended, he continued to serve as a minister in and around that city. In 1866 he accepted the call to pastor the First Presbyterian Church of New Bern, NC. His Diary gives valuable insight into the last days of the War as well as into life during the days of Reconstuction and the post-Civil War era. His legacy as a Presbyterian minister inspired his son and grandson to become ministers as well as missionaries to Africa.
The editor of Rev. L.C. Vass' Diary is one of his great-granddaughters Elizabeth Maury Vass Wilkerson. She is the daughter of Rev. Lachlan C. III and Winifred K. Vass who were Presbyterian missionaries in the Belgian Congo/Zaire/Democratic Repuiblic of the Congo. "Lilibet" and her three sisters were all born and reared in the Congo. After graduating from Presbyterian College in Clinton SC, Mrs. Wilkerson began her teaching career which continues in Laurens, SC where she lives with her husband Reggie Wilkerson. They have three children, six grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
At present Mrs. Wilkerson is working on editing her parents' letters from their thirty years as missionaries from 1940 to 1970.
Sunday, Apl. 2 (1865) - After the severe fighting of the previous days, our lines on the right today are pressed back, until I can see them from the back gate of the Hospital. They are only about one or one and a half miles distant, and the Enemy’s shell fall into and about our grounds. One passed very near me while at the gate, but thro God’s mercy did not burst, but fell a little beyond in the road, near our ordinance wagon. Of course all the city is in confusion. The tobacco warehouses are burning. I walked down town and saw them on fire. Shells were falling into and around the fleeing masses.
