What grabbed my attention was the first line: “My dear and most affectionate lover…”  What a way to start a letter–doesn’t it sound racy? But actually many letters written during the 19th century were as full of love and feelings as modern letters are. The difference is that the 19th-century term “lover” does not necessarily carry the same connotations as it does today. This was a letter written by George Ward (1837-1927) of Tazewell County on 16 July 1861, while serving with 21st Virginia Infantry Regiment, Company H, to his love interest, Mary Jane Ratliff. Ratliff (1842-1905) was the daughter of Abednego and Louisa Vicey Matney Ratliff, also of Tazewell County. George writes of his feelings for [Mary] Jane (“dear Jinnia”), his hopes to marry her, and how he hated parting from her. George mentions the possibility of his death numerous times in the letter, ending it with his hopes that they meet in heaven should he not survive the war.

Transcript of George Ward letter

I have come across many love letters while working on the Legacy Project and always find them so endearing. Often times they end in heartbreak as I find out that the men died in battle or from disease. Luckily George Ward survived the war, married Mary Jane Ratliff, and the two lived out their years in Tazewell County, and later in Iowa.

If you have any letters, diaries, or other manuscript materials to add to the CW150 Legacy Project, we are having a scanning event at the Library of Virginia on 6 April 2013 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Please contact me at renee.savits@lva.virginia.gov or (804) 692-3629 to tell me about your collection and schedule an appointment.

-Renee Savits, CW150 Legacy Project Coordinator

The CW 150 Legacy Project was recently in Fairfax for a scanning event at the City of Fairfax Regional Library. The event was a great success with a number of diaries, letters, and photographs scanned. We also had one of our biggest ‘wow’ moments when a donor brought in a box of almost 400 letters from her ancestor for scanning. Most of the letters, written between Cecil A. Burleigh of the 20th Connecticut Infantry and his wife, Caroline, were still in their envelopes. It is exciting and rare to see a collection that is not only large but also comprehensive, with letters written from husband and wife. These materials give both sides of the story of a couple separated by war, as Cecil wrote from localities such as Stafford Court House and Alexandria, Virginia, and after participation in the Battle of Chancellorsville, while Caroline gave updates on life in Connecticut.

Due to the size of the collection it will take us a while to scan and post everything, but to have such a great resource from one family is just amazing!

-Renee Savits, CW 150 Legacy Project — Eastern Region

In case you missed it the CW 150 Legacy Project ‘s visit to the Campbell County courthouse in Rustburg was featured recently in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and on WSET-TV which covers Lynchburg, Danville, and Roanoke. See the newspaper story here and the video here. Both stories cover the project’s continuing mission to to locate Civil War-era materials held by private citizens, digitize them, and place them online.

As you may have heard from this blog and other sources, the CW 150 Legacy Project: Document Digitization and Access  is an effort to locate Civil War-era materials held by private citizens, digitize them, and place them online.  It is a joint project between the Library of Virginia (LVA) and the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission.

Now that the project is underway, the motto “Have Scanner, Will Travel” aptly applies to my colleague Renee Savits and me. We are the CW 150 Legacy Project archivists, often seen in the LVA building rolling large plastic travel boxes containing our scanners, loading up our vehicle for the latest event. Renee is responsible for the project’s Eastern Region, and I am responsible for the Western Region.

In September, Renee and I hit the road, beginning what will be nearly two years of traveling across the commonwealth in search of these materials. We knew people would be interested in the project, but the level of interest we are encountering is beyond our expectations. At most of our events, all appointment slots are filled. We meet wonderful people who are excited to have the opportunity to share their items with us.  A story about the project in the Washington Post in November generated even more interest.

A typical scanning event is scheduled through a given locality’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee, which is responsible for securing the location for the event, publicizing the event, and setting appointments. On the day of the event, Renee or I will arrive with another member of the LVA staff to set up the equipment, prepare the necessary paperwork, meet with people, and begin the scanning process. The amount of time we spend in a locality varies, from one to two days, depending on what the local committee feels is appropriate based on the level of local community response.

Once we are back at the LVA, we perform basic editing of the images (adjusting contrast, etc.) to ensure a uniform level of quality. We catalog each item and load it into our digital asset management system, DigiTool. At that point, it is available on the Virginia Memory Web site, on a page dedicated to the Project: www.virginiamemory.com/cw150.

We found some wonderful items in the six scanning events held so far.  For example, the following is one of several letters that John Keefer of Franklin, Pennsylvania, wrote to his family back home while traveling to the various encampments where his son, Union soldier George Keefer, was stationed. (You can obtain a transcript of the letter, provided by the letter’s owner, by contacting the blog editors).

Another example of a great find was a letter from Linton Perkins to “Brother and Sister.”

In this letter, Perkins is writing from Fort Worth, Texas, describing preparations for the secession vote in Texas and inquiring about the vote in Virginia. Perkins later writes about his experiences in Texas and compares life there to life in Virginia. You can read a transcript here: Perkins transcript.

To see materials contributed to the CW 150 Legacy Project, please visit our Virginia Memory page to search the collection. The cataloging process is ongoing; please check back frequently as the online collection is continuously updated. If you have materials you would like to contribute to the CW 150 Legacy Project, please visit the Project’s Web site to learn about how you can participate.

We have more than 40 additional events scheduled so far through June 2012, and dates are added on a regular basis. Renee and I will be blogging more about the CW 150 Legacy Project as we continue our travels, so stay tuned!

-Laura Drake Davis, CW 150 Legacy Project – Western Region

The conference was a good opportunity to share the scope of our collections with the public. LVA’s Photographic and Digital Imaging Department Manager Mark Fagerburg and his staff created beautiful dry mount boards with images of fifteen manuscripts from the Library’s Local, Private, and State Records collections, including a sketchbook kept by Benjamin Lewis Blackford (Acc. 22177c), Franklin County Reports of Indigent Soldiers’ Families (Barcodes 1145465, 1145468), and a letter of the Black Band of New York to Governor Henry A. Wise (Acc. 36710).

Over the course of the three-day conference, we spoke to a number of participants to drum up interest in the Library and the CW 150 Legacy Project. The project, a joint venture of the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, is an effort to scour the state to locate and scan privately-held manuscript items relating to the Civil War, for eventual availability online. 

LVA’s display at the conference included some digital scans gathered in Danville and Winchester, Virginia, during the pilot phase of the CW 150 Legacy Project, from late 2008 to 2009.  For more information about this endeavor, click here, and keep checking this blog.  We plan to post a more detailed explanation of the project and updates on its progress as it gets underway in the next few months!    

-Renee Savits, CW 150 Legacy Project — Eastern Region