Letter, 23 November 1855, of B.S. Hill, written from Kingsville, South Carolina, to his children, Ella and Edwin Hill, in New York, is penned on letterhead stationery illustrated with an engraving of the Kingsville Hotel and apprises them of the progress of his journey.

Writing presumably from the hotel, Hill notes that he was in "a nice little room all by myself with a good fire," a luxury his travels had not always afforded him. "Yesterday I was at Camden," Hill notes, "the place where a great battle was fought with the British - and was in the old house where Lord Cornwallis kept his Head-Quarters…." There were in the walls of the house "large ball holes." That afternoon he had witnessed "a Regiment of citizen soldiers who met for their annual parade." However, "they did not look like our companies in New York for they did not wear uniform[s] and some of them looked verry funny with their country coats on and some of the Captains looked like the pictures in a comical almanac and reminds me of a picture in some of your books where the dog brings up the rear!!"

The letter concludes with a brief postscript written from Columbia, S.C., on 26 November 1855. Sometimes spelled "Kingville," this once thriving railroad junction was located in lower Richland County, S.C., at the edge of the Congaree Swamp, just above the fork of the rivers.