Point Coupee, was during the civil war laid waste by the Federals, who burned and utterly destroyed everything on the place. This added to the freeing of his hundreds of slaves, and the total destruction of his immense fortune, so embittered his last days that he died of a broken heart. At the battle of New Orleans, war of 1812-1815, he served with distinction and at our old summer home on the Gulf coast at Biloxi, Mississippi, I still have the sword that he so valiantly carried and many other mementoes of those early days, and all the old family furniture of that period. My father's armorial bearings was a burning tower, that he had engraved on the family silver, which is now in my possession. In my four years' service in the Confederate Army I was on the staff of Lieut. Gen. Leonidas Polk, who was killed in my arms at Pine Mountain in Georgia. At his death I was transferred to the staff of Lieut. Gen. A. P. Stewart, at whose side I was when he was desperately wounded at the battle of Israel Church in Georgia. Gen. Stewart is still alive, and between him and myself there exists the strongest bonds of friendship. He is a very old man, and when he passes away one of the great lives of those days of carnage, that gave birth to so many men of military genius, will stand very high in the history of that great epoch. In reviewing my military service, that covered a period of four years, as a simple Lieutenant, during which long period I was an exile from my home (that was in possession of the Federals), I can claim the very remarkable and totally accidental distinction of having had two Lieutenant Generals and Corps Commanders, one instantly killed and the other desperately wounded, in my arms."

I had hoped and expected to get more complete data of genealogy of this family, but owing to the serious illness of Aristide Hopkins failed to get it.

LAFCADIO HEARN was born June 27, 1850, at Leucadia, Santa Maura, Ionian Islands, where his father, a surgeon in the British army, was stationed and married. His father was also an Irish Captain of the English regiment stationed there. His mother was a beautiful daughter of a Greek mountaineer. Shortly the family returned to Dublin, where the Greek wife was loved by all who met her. Her husband ceased to care for her and asked for a divorce, and she hastened the suit and then returned to her own land. Hearn then married a first love and went to India. Lafcadio was left with

[Continued on page 721]

Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.