Civil War-era letters

Background Information on the Civil War Letters

by Mary Ellen "Elly" Davis

May 25, 2024

Recently I began working in the Blount County Public Library with the Blount County Genealogical & Historical Society on Thursday mornings when several members meet to work on their Journal, web page, and aiding folks who come in to search their family histories. Many members have talents in varied areas, so I began questioning what job I could do to contribute. Over the years, I have scanned many photos and other items for my own files, so I said I would like to be the scanner for the group. When a resident brought in a box of early photos of Miser Station in Blount County, I began that work.

One of the genealogists, April Wegner, mentioned a box in the basement archives that had not been studied, but she thought was Civil War-era letters. I immediately said I wanted to check them out. Member Karen Kidd found the box. It had no lid and was a cardboard index card box. The member who had volunteered there the longest, Tim Walker, said he remembered the box being there when he began eight years before. We do not know how long it has been in the archives or who contributed it.

The first letter I opened was titled “Parole Camp, Vicksburg, March 26, 1865.” Bingo! We had found hidden treasures! What followed was twenty-three letters from two Union soldiers from the 3rd Tennessee Cavalry to Angeline Gamble; wife of Moses and sister of Leonidus M. (“Lon”) Thompson. She also kept four letters from sisters and nieces that I have included.

Having transcribed letters from my family from the 1880’s, I knew there was a translation problem. In that era, there were no periods or commas, so you had to figure out where the sentence ended. They also rarely capitalized names, and spelling was questionable. Write and wrote were written as rite and rote. Double-letter words never had double letters, such as pretty. Many words were phonetically spelled, such as would was wold. For this reason, I first transcribed each letter with the author’s spelling and big spaces where I thought the sentence ended. Then I did a second modern transcription with sentences, paragraphs, and how that letter would have been written today. Please forgive any errors in my punctuation as I was not great at this when I was doing college work.

Some of the letters give military details that would be helpful to the enemy. I see now why letters in later wars were censored before mailing home. Also, some language will be offensive to our modern readers, but reporting the views of the times is part of history.