33,000 New Civil War Letters and Artifacts found in Virginia

[Christine]

This is very cool. Makes me wonder what else we will find!

"The opening line still hurts across the years.

“Dear Mother — I am here a prisoner of war & mortally wounded.”

John Winn Moseley was writing home from the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4, 1863. He was a 30-year-old Confederate from Alabama being cared for by his Yankee captors.

“I can live but a few hours more at farthest,” he wrote. “I was shot fifty-yards of the enemy’s line. They have been extremely kind to me.”

Moseley died the next day. His letter — on delicate blue paper, stained with what might be blood — made it to his mother in Buckingham County, Va., and the family kept it ever after. Now it has come to light in a trove of Civil War documents that the State Library of Virginia discovered in a surprisingly straightforward way: It asked state residents to bring them out of their homes.

From 2010 until last year, as Virginia observed the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, archivists traveled the state in an “Antiques Roadshow” style campaign to unearth the past. Organizers had thought the effort might produce a few hundred new items. They were a little off. It flushed out more than 33,000 pages of letters, diaries, documents and photographs that the library scanned and has made available for study online."

Read the rest here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vir...1#comments

[Gene C]

Wow!
Thanks Christine, what a fascinating article.
What a touching letter. Interesting (to me) what his thoughts were as life faded away from him.

"I had hoped to have been spared, but a righteous God has ordered otherwise & I feel prepared to trust my cause into his hands.
Farewell to you all. Pray that God will receive my soul. Your unfortunate son, John."

[RJNorton]

I second Gene. Thanks for posting this, Christine!

[Thomas Kearney]

Thanks for sharing Christine. It must have been hard for his parents to get word from Grant that he died. To be a parent of a soldier serving their country is hard, and I'm sure every letter they recieved was a sigh of relief knowing their son was ok.

[LincolnMan]

Yes, very touching. How brave that young man was-like so many.

[HerbS]

I love to read Civil War letters,they reveal so much history!

[Thomas Kearney]

Herb's right, they give a good idea into the life of a soldier

[HerbS]

I love to read diaries too!

[Thomas Kearney]

(11-15-2016 01:43 PM)HerbS Wrote:  I love to read diaries too!

Me too! You and me both think alike Herb!

[Jim Garrett]

I provided two CDVs and an ambrotype of ancestors to the project. Library of Virginia has unbelievable collections.

[RJNorton]

(11-19-2016 08:37 AM)Jim Garrett Wrote:  I provided two CDVs and an ambrotype of ancestors to the project.

That's wonderful, Jim!