Do you make good coffee?

In August of 1863, Union Army Sgt. Edwin Lybarger was on provost guard in Memphis Tennessee with his regiment, the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He advertised in the newspaper for a correspondent of the Fair Sex for “agreeable, interesting and useful correspondence.” His diary gives some indication that he did it on a dare with his friend, Co. K Captain John Rhodes.

Edwin received a reply from a young lady signing herself “Fannie Jerome.” After they had exchanged several letters, “Fannie” revealed her real name to be Lou Riggen. He confessed his real name, and they continued to correspond for the duration of the war. She seems to have resisted his appeals to send him her ”likeness” (photograph).

In 1864, he wrote to Lou to learn more details about her accomplishments, abilities, and sensibilities:

Do you like music? Play on the piano? Can you bake bread?

Can you bake mince pies? Make good coffee?

Keep house? Can you eat your share of a dinner?

Do you like History, Poetry, or Novels best?

What church to you belong to?

On Sept. 29, 1864, Lou Riggen answered his letter:

Keep house? I once kept house for six months to the edification of the whole family except Lou Riggen. My! what an endless task of intricate labor. Brooms, carpets, beds, cobwebs, dinners, suppers, breakfasts, with all their attendant auxiliaries of good butter, sweet milk, done bread & not burnt either. ‘To be or not to be’ good was always the dread question until dinner stood in all its dread array on the table. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t.

Edwin and Lou corresponded for the rest of the war. Their plan to meet on his way home in the summer of 1865 was not accomplished. He continued to correspond with Lou after returning to Ohio and, apparently reluctant to end their correspondence, finally told her had married another girl. Her response, her last letter, eloquently expresses her dismay that he had ignored her request to return her letters to her.

The letters written to Union officer Edwin Lybarger from 1862-1866

by Lou Riggen and other women,

are published, with historical social commentary, in

WANTED–CORRESPONDENCE:

Letters to a Union Soldier (Swallow Press, 2009).

Mar 22 2010

The colloquial power of Gen. Sherman

In his diary of March 5, 1865, my great-grandfather Lt. Edwin L. Lybarger, 43rd OVI, recorded an evening in the company of Gen. Sherman:

“Headquarters 43^rd at a Mr. Woodwards in Cheraw, who had a letter from Gen. Hardee recommending the family to the clemency of Gen. Sherman. Sherman called in the evening and we had the pleasure of hearing the colloquial power of Gen. Sherman. He conversed for half an hour in an easy manner with Mr. Woodward and his Mother-in-law, but showing in every thing he said, his implacable hatred of the rebel cause.”

He said among other things that he did not want the South to come back in the Union, for we could drive them out and people the country with a better race. That all the men, women and children in Charleston ought to have been killed and the city destroyed when they fired on Sumpter and [we] would have had no war and that he should pursue his vocation with perseverance while the war lasted. When asked where he expected to go next, he replied, “I have about 60,000 men out there and I intend to go pretty much where I please.”

The 17^th Corps crossed the great Peedee and camped on the East bank.”

Sep 22 2009

Aunt Nancy’s 90th birthday brought the good news

On Sept. 17, 2005, her 90th birthday, Nancy Lybarger Rhoades received the news that Swallow Press at Ohio University would publish the Lybarger Civil War letters, a project she had nurtured for many years.

Nancy Rhoades (1915-2007) was the granddaughter of Edwin Lewis Lybarger (1840-1924), who served in the 43rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 1862-1865. In 1991, in a trunk in her attic, she discovered 168 letters written by several dozen women family members, friends, and sweethearts to Edwin throughout the war.

Nancy transcribed these letters, and they were published in 2009 by Ohio University’s Swallow Press, with a social commentary by Lucy E. Bailey, on the significance of women’s war work in the North during the Civil War.

WANTED–CORRESPONDENCE: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier

Edited by Nancy L. Rhoades and Lucy E. Bailey

Fact to Fiction:

Aunt Nancy let me read the transcripts in 1996, and I read late into the night. By morning, I felt committed to writing about this family history. Since we didn’t have Edwin’s letters, only those he received and saved, I determined to write a novel in order to tell his story too.

My aunt was always the keeper of the family flame, and had been a reference librarian most of her life. It took me several years to gain her permission to write Edwin’s story as fiction. In addition to the letters, she trusted me with Edwin’s other war papers, and I made some great discoveries.

My best discoveries were Edwin’s daily journals, which Nancy thought had been lost, loaned to someone and never returned. But when I saw four small bound notebooks in the bottom of a box, I knew immediately what they were. They were written over four years, 1862 through 1865, a mainly straightforward log of his whereabouts each day. I spent several months transcribing them, my progress impeded by Edwin’s often illegible handwriting. But the ink was durable, I was persistent, and I eventually succeeded in discovering Edwin’s day by day itinerary throughout the war. This became the accurate bones for my novel.

Some years have passed since I first read the Lybarger letters, but after extensive research and several revised drafts, I have completed a novel that is based on Edwin Lybarger’s Civil War diaries and letters. The title has evolved from Civilities to The Arithmetic to The Color of Prayer.

I hope Aunt Nancy would be pleased.

Jul 14 2009

Stealing men’s hearts

In 1909, my great-grandfather Edwin Lybarger and his wife Nancy (Moore) traveled from Warsaw to Newark, Ohio for the GAR Encampment of Civil War veterans. They stayed with Uriah Brillhart and his wife Ida (Severn). The Brillhart family had lived in Spring Mountain, and Uriah would have been a young boy when Edwin returned in 1865 at the end of the war.

Among his papers, Edwin kept this old newspaper clipping:

“Capt. E. L. Lybarger at last is the possessor of a pretty little maltese kitten. For several years the Captain has been the lover of beautiful cats but could not keep them in his possession. He has bought them, had them given to him by the dozens but something happened to each of them, they either died or strayed away to some other place.

Capt. Lybarger was attending the G.A.R. encampment at Newark, Ohio this week and one day he was visiting at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Uriah Brillhart. The Brillharts owned a little maltese kitten which as soon as was seen by the captain captivated his heart. The Captain told Mr. Brillhart of his luck with cats and said that if he had any way of taking the kitten home with him that he would steal it. The conversation was then turned to other topics and the subject was dropped.

When the Capt. And Mrs. Lybarger were getting aboard their train for home Friday, Mr. Brillhart handed the general a small box saying that it was a souvenir of the encampment. After the train pulled out the box was opened and there snuggled up within the box was the baby cat. The captain carried the kitten home with him and it is now drinking milk and eating strawberry short cake.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Abraham Lincoln loved cats and could play with them for hours. When asked if her husband had a hobby, Mary Todd Lincoln replied, “cats.”

President Lincoln visited General Grant at City Point,Virginia in March of 1865. The Civil War was drawing to a close and the enormous task of reuniting the country lay ahead, yet the President made time to care for three orphaned kittens. Abraham Lincoln noticed three stray kittens in the telegraph hut. Picking them up and placing them in his lap, he asked about their mother. When the President learned that the kittens’ mother was dead, he made sure the kittens would be fed and a good home found for them.

Jul 1 2009

Cast on 38 loops on each of 3 pins.

Pattern from Godey’s Lady’s Book, Jan. 1860

Materials: Six ounces of lambswool; 4 pins, No. 18.

Cast on 38 loops on each of three pins. Knit two plain, one pearl in every row. Knit till the work measures nine inches, narrowing five times in that space by knitting two stitches together on each side of the back seam; divide the loops in half, and form the heel thus: Place one half of the loops on one pin for the heel, the remainder on the two pins for the instep. Knit the loops on one pin for four inches, narrowing twice; knit to the back seam, divide the loops and cast off. Pick up the loops at each side of the heel, knit these with those for the instep. In the first round make a stitch after every third on the two side pins; in the next round, narrow by knitting the last on the side pin and the first on the instep in one; repeat at the other side of instep. Next round, plain. Repeat these two rounds fourteen times; then knit about eighty rounds; after which, narrow for the toe. Narrow three times at each side of the pins in every other round, till the whole are narrowed off the sole of the foot, and the last sixty rounds must be plain knitting.

Apr 28 2009

We live in deeds

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best.

Philip James Bailey (1816-1902)

This illustrated, hand-printed poem in its simple matte and frame is one of my few mementos from my uncle Edwin Lybarger II, who died in 1942.

My uncle Eddie was named for his grandfather, a civil war veteran. Eddie was handsome and died young. When I was little, he was forever watching us from a dusty frame on my grandmother’s piano. No one ever talked about him.

Years later, I found a box of his papers. He acted in plays in high school, wrote poems, drew pictures. Girls made friends with his three sisters in hopes that he’d pay attention to them. He paid my mother a nickel for laying out his clothes when he was going on a date. His father made him go to college to study engineering.

After five semesters, he left college and didn’t write. The next time the family heard from him he had enlisted in the Army. He died at 24. There was a photo of a woman in his wallet, no name or date.

I eventually discovered the verse was from English poet Philip James Bailey’s very long poem, Festus. An excerpt:

This life’s a mystery.

The value of a thought cannot be told;

But it is clearly worth a thousand lives

Like many men’s. And yet men love to live

As if mere life were worth their living for.

What but perdition will it be to most?

Life’s more than breath and the quick round of blood

It is a great spirit and a busy heart.

The coward and the small in soul scarce do live.

One generous feeling—one great thought—one deed

Of good, ere night, would make life longer seem

Than if each year might number a thousand days, —

Spent as is this by nations of mankind.

We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most—feels the noblest—acts the best.

Life’s but a means unto an end—that end,

Beginning, mean and end to all things— God.

The dead have til the glory of the world.

Why will we live and not be glorious ?

Festus was apparently well-known after it was written, in 1839, and reprinted for years, in England and America. One critic attributed its author, Philip James Bailey, with “the encouragement of poetic lawlessness..a great corrupter of taste.” From the New York Times, July 28, 1889.

THEN now

intrigues of Civil War history & fiction

Category Archives: 19th century writing