Advice from an Old Soldier

CIVIL WAR VETERANS of 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Co. K (Knox County) who enlisted at Camp Chase, Ohio in late 1861, saw their first action in Missouri in Feb. 1862 with the Ohio Brigade, followed Gen. Sherman on the March to the

Do you make good coffee?

What were a woman’s most important qualities in the 1860s, in the eyes of a Union soldier? Edwin Lybarger, an officer in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, received letters from a dozen Northern women between 1862 and the end of the war

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

In 1905, Mark Twain’s publisher thought “The War Prayer” was traitorous. It was not published until after Twain’s death, when the U.S. was nearing entry into the Great War. It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country

Grandmother’s 1896 trip to Italy

At the age of 10, my grandmother Ethel Finney (1885-1969), the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in Egypt, was invited to join a wealthy family on a tour of Italy. She wrote a letter about the trip to her 11-year-old cousin Lucile,