I have neglected to answer your last letter2 so long that I am most ashamed to write to you now but I know that you will excuse my seeming neglect for I have been very busy for the past three months.
This letter will be handed to you by our esteemed Friend Miss Kate C Riley3
of Washington who I would like to introduce to you. We made her
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acquaintance at the same time we did yours and under the Same circumstances performing
debts of kindness to Sick & wounded Soldiers. She has made us several flying visits
this summer & I have taken the liberty of sending you this letter of Introduction
by her.
She can talk to you about David4 & myself from having seen us lately.
My little baby Walt5 is well & Bright as a dollar. with Love to yourself I will close for the present.
Please write Soon
your Friend B. H. Wilson.Correspondent:
Benton H. Wilson (1843–1914?)
was the son of Henry Wilson (1805–1870)—a harness and trunk maker—and
Ann S. Williams Wilson (1809–1887). Benton Wilson was a U. S. Civil War soldier recovering in Armory Square Hospital
in Washington, D.C., when he met Whitman. Later, Wilson was employed selling melodeons and sewing machines. He also
sold life insurance and may have worked as a pawnbroker. He married
Nellie Gage Morrell Wilson (ca. 1841–1892). Nellie had two children, Lewis
and Eva Morrell, from a previous marriage, and she and Benton were the parents of five children.
Wilson named his first child "Walter Whitman Wilson," after the poet; their other
children were Austin, Irene, Georgie, and Kathleen Wilson. Benton Wilson's
correspondence with Whitman spanned a decade, lasting from 1865 to 1875.