Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 87

Price Realized: $ 1,625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(CIVIL WAR.) Pair of notebooks tracking graves on Civil War battlefields. 43, 82 manuscript pages. 8vo, unmatched original calf bindings, the first worn and partially disbound; contents generally clean. Vp, 1867 and undated
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Additional Details

When the Civil War ended, the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers were buried in makeshift graves at battlefields and hospital sites across the South, often with minimal identification. A massive project to identify these graves and reinter the bodies in consolidated national cemeteries was led by Major Edmund Burke Whitman (1812-1883), Assistant Quartermaster (and later superintendent of the national cemetery system). The first step was to find the existing graves, for which Whitman hired teams of researchers to comb the battlefields and record their findings. In these notebooks, the grave hunters describe the condition and location of each grave, transcribe whatever is legible on the grave markings, pass on whatever oral history they can glean from the locals, and often conclude with the name of a local informant.
The first volume was kept by Lawrence B. Fish of Louisville, KY in conjunction with Major Whitman. It is written in diary form, with narrative entries for 3 through 19 April 1867, with a running table on the side which tallies identified and unknown graves. Their work was mostly in Kentucky, with a few entries in Tennessee. A typical entry on 17 April in Clarksville, TN reads 'Graves undisturbed and cared for by colored man who lives on and owns lot, there are 126 soldiers and 6 soldiers' children buried. A portion of the soldiers were col'd.' The second volume is by F.N. Field, and is similar except for the lack of a running table or dates; he was mostly in Tennessee, crossing into Kentucky and Mississippi. It begins with an eleven-point "Memorandum for Guidance in Exploring for Graves." with--a printed report, "Roll of Honor: Names of Soldiers who Died in the Defence of the American Union, Interred in the National Cemeteries at Washington, D.C." Washington, 1865.