Chapter One:
My name is Margaret Anne Whitlock, I have very long curly honey blonde hair and brown eyes. I was born on December 25th, 1844. I have, or rather, had a twin brother named Jasper, but we don't know what happened to him. My younger siblings are Silas, Henry and Georgina. My name may be Margaret, but I go by Maisie, I have since I was a baby, when my parents started calling me that. We do a lot of civil war reenactment tours, and museum stuff as well as writing books on it, a lot of textbooks and other people doesn't get everything right, so we like to get it correctly, the way we lived through it.
During the Civil War, my twin brother was a major in the Texas Calvary, and I was a nurse. Our father, George (Whom my sister was named after), was also a major, the highest rank a medical surgeon could get. Momma, Daddy, Silas, Henry, Genie (Georgina's preferred nickname), and I were all changed after the battle of Peachtree Creek in Georgia (July 22, 1864), but it was a few days after the battle, on July 27, after I'd received a letter, stating that my husband, Andrew Pickett, son of General George Pickett had died in the battle of Second Kernstown, just outside of Winchester, Virginia on July 24th, 1864.
His father actually told me about his death, as he wanted me to hear it from him in person. General George Edward Pickett was born in 1825, in Richmond Virginia and was in the union army after he graduated from West Point. Andrew was born in 1841 and we met them (well, dad met George when he trained at West Point while training for medicine, as he needed combat too) when George was serving on the Texas frontier around the time of the Mexican-American war in 1849, but officially in 1950 when he was 9 and Jasper and me were 6.
The two Picketts left in 1853, they had left to head to the Washington Territory. I didn't see Andrew again until January of 1861 when I was 16 and he nearly 19. His father and General Robert E. Lee as well as the confederate president, Jefferson Davis to meet with my father to talk to him about joining as the confederate medical major. And I was signed on as a nurse, by that time, I had been working with my father for a few years.
I sighed as I got up to get ready. All of our stuff had been packed up, and my brothers and I are moving today with the horses from California to (finally) Virginia, and our parents and Genie would be moving in the next two weeks, as they wrap the last of the stuff up and tied up all loose ends. It was Christmas day, my birthday, but at least the road would be clear.
Dad had a job secured in Winchester, Virginia, so that's where we were moving to, well, at least not far from it, at first he didn't want to accept it, because of Andrew, but I assured him that I would be then, Momma suggested moving to the old family plantation, about half an hour away, where my dad grew up before moving to Texas. My dad was born in raised in Front Royal, Virginia, the property was that of what was used as a hospital in early 1864, until we left to head back to Georgia again in June of 1864, by then, days away from where Andrew was killed. The whole property total, was about 116 acres, it's not used for farming anymore, so it was pretty easy to upkeep. It would be 41 hour, 2,732 mile trip, and I was transporting 4 horses, Silas would transporting 3 and Henry 2 of them.
I got dressed in a pair of jeans, a black long sleeved shirt and pulled a camo hoodie on as well as my Dixie flag cowboy boots. I put part of my long curly hair in a crown knot and left the rest running down my back. I grabbed the last of my bags and put them in my dark gray 2011 Toyota tundra, before backing it up to hitch the 6 horse trailer to my truck before making sure each stall in the trailer had sawdust and hay on the floor, a hay net in reach of the horses, and that the vents were fully open. In the back of the trailer, I made sure that I had buckets of food and water, a horse first aid kit (per horse), grooming kit (per horse), and tack and rugs. I went to the stables to get the first horse to load, which was mine, a Quarter Horse named Total Rebellion, but I called him Rebel for short. He has a dark brown coat and some white markings on his legs. I had an orange camo halter on him and a camo leading rope that I used to get him on the trailer, before closing his pen, and headed back for the next one. The other 3 that I would be transporting are just extra horses that didn't really belong to anyone.
The next horse was also a quarter horse, a solid black horse named Southern Legacy, whom we called Legacy. He had a dark blue halter, and I took the black leading rope that was hanging beside his stall and got him onto the trailer, before going back for Dixie, whom was an American Saddle Bred, and she was a gray and palomino mix. I clipped her rainbow colored leading rope and clipped it to her multi colored hearts halter and got her on. Then I went back for the final horse that would be traveling with me, Rover, an appaloosa, who had the leopard coat pattern (white body with black spots). He didn't have a halter on, so I put a green one to him and grabbed the matching leading rope and hooked to him and finally got him on. I closed his stall and then the trailer door.
Silas had left about 10 minutes earlier, and Henry wasn't up yet. I went to find my parents. "Hey, I have the horses loaded up, and I'm leaving now." I said.
Dad nodded. "Okay honey, call us when you get there and make sure you stop for breaks." He said.
I nodded, "I will." I said, I hugged my parents and went back out to my truck.
"Maisie, can you take the dog with you?" Mom asked, I nodded, they would be the busy ones on their moving day, with everything else, and I guess they wanted to get the animals out of the way.
I opened the back door of my truck and Gunner (the chocolate lab) hopped in. I made sure that I had their papers in a folder on the passenger's seat and my I.D nearby, in reach and drove out of the drive way. I had gotten all the sleep I needed for the next two days (as we don't need but 3-7 hours of sleep a week), so I would be there tomorrow. I stopped in Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and finally in Roanoke, Virginia for breaks for the horses. Now it was just 2 hours and 46 minutes before I got to my destination.