The colonel had his family with him, consisting of Mrs.Churchill, Mary, now Mrs.Professor Baird, and Charles Churchill, then a boy of about fifteen years of age.
We all lived in a tavern, and had an office convenient.

The duty consisted in taking individual depositions of the officers and men who had composed two regiments and a battalion of mounted volunteers that had served in Florida.

An oath was administered to each man by Colonel Churchill, who then turned the claimant over to one of us to take down and record his deposition according to certain forms, which enabled them to be consolidated and tabulated.
We remained in Marietta about six weeks, during which time I repeatedly rode to Kenesaw Mountain, and over the very ground where afterward, in 1864, we had some hard battles.
After closing our business at Marietta the colonel ordered us to transfer our operations to Bellefonte, Alabama.

As he proposed to take his family and party by the stage, Hammond lent me his riding-horse, which I rode to Allatoona and the Etowah River.
Hearing of certain large Indian mounds near the way, I turned to one side to visit them, stopping a couple of days with Colonel Lewis Tumlin, on whose plantation these mounds were.

We struck up such an acquaintance that we corresponded for some years, and as I passed his plantation during the war, in 1864, I inquired for him, but he was not at home.