About the Project |
The Letters Home project is built around the John L. Nau III Civil War History Collection, which contains tens of thousands of letters, diaries, photographs, and artifacts from the Civil War era. Mr. Nau donated the collection to the University of Virginia in 2019. Researchers can view the original items in person at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
Letters Home features searchable transcriptions of 13,500 letters and diaries as well as 4,200 original biographies and two interactive maps. A defining feature of the project is its focus on "common" soldiers and their families. Their letters provide invaluable insight into the ways soldiers experienced the war's climactic battles and the rhythms of daily life. The project often contains multiple letters from each soldier, enabling readers to trace their journeys through the war and watch the evolution of their emotions and beliefs. Together, these letters capture the stories of the "ordinary" people--Union and Confederate, soldiers and civilians, men and women--who experienced America's deadliest conflict.
Approximately 88% of the letters were written by men and women who remained loyal to the Union, while 12% were written by Confederates. Ninety three percent were written by men, and 7% were written by women. Most writers were white, but the project contains nine letters from African American men and one from an African American woman. Approximately 87% of the letters were written by soldiers, 11% by civilians, 0.7% by Marines, and 0.6% by sailors.
This project would not have been possible without the generous support of Mr. John L. Nau III and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities.
|
Editorial Process |
The documents in this collection were transcribed by Carrabba Conservation in Austin, Texas. The Letters Home team made occasional corrections when we discovered that a word or name had been mistranscribed.
The People pages (biographies) identify women and men by the names they held in April 1861. If a woman got married and changed her name before that date, her page identifies her by her married name. Click here to read an example. If she got married after that date, her page identifies her by her maiden name. Click here to read an example. Alternative names can be found in the metadata section at the bottom of each page.
The Document pages identify women and men by the names they held at the time the document was written. If this differs from the name on their People page, the latter name is listed in parentheses. Agnes Forsyth Voris, for example, married Union soldier Francis C. Miller in April 1865. Letters written before that date list "Francis C. Miller to Agnes F. Voris." Click here to read an example. Letters written after that date list "Francis C. Miller to Agnes F. (Voris) Miller." Click here to read an example.
|
About the Nau Center |
The John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, directed by Professor Caroline E. Janney, promotes scholarship, teaching, and public outreach regarding the United States in the era of the Civil War. The Center's expansive program includes support for graduate research, lectures and conferences designed to reach academic and lay audiences, a summer teacher seminar, a book prize for superior scholarship in the field, postdoctoral fellowships, and undergraduate internships at public historical sites and institutions.
|
John L. Nau III
|
John L. Nau III is a graduate of UVA, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in History. He is a businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the former chairman and CEO of Silver Eagle Distributors, which was previously the largest Anheuser-Busch distributor in the nation. For more than 40 years, he has served in leadership roles for many civic, community, and philanthropic organizations in Texas and throughout the United States. His service to the community currently includes membership on the UVA Board of Visitors, the American Battlefield Trust Board of Trustees, and the National Park Foundation Board of Directors. He is the chairman of the Texas Historical Commission. From 2001 to 2010, he served as chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the federal agency responsible for promoting the preservation of America’s historic places. Mr. Nau has spent a lifetime studying American military history, developing a special interest with the Civil War. He began collecting at an early age and eventually amassed one of the largest private collections of Civil War documents, photographs, weapons, and artifacts in the country. In 2019, he donated a substantial portion of this material to UVA, where it forms the John L. Nau III Civil War History Collection. |
Editorial Process |
The documents in this collection were transcribed by Carrabba Conservation in Austin, Texas. The Letters Home team made occasional corrections when we discovered that a word or name had been mistranscribed.
The People pages (biographies) identify women and men by the names they held in April 1861. If a woman got married and changed her name before that date, her page identifies her by her married name. Click here to read an example. If she got married after that date, her page identifies her by her maiden name. Click here to read an example. Alternative names can be found in the metadata section at the bottom of each page.
The Document pages identify women and men by the names they held at the time the document was written. If this differs from the name on their People page, the latter name is listed in parentheses. Agnes Forsyth Voris, for example, married Union soldier Francis C. Miller in April 1865. Letters written before that date list "Francis C. Miller to Agnes F. Voris." Click here to read an example. Letters written after that date list "Francis C. Miller to Agnes F. (Voris) Miller." Click here to read an example.
|
