SCOUT

Seventy page battlefield ledger for Company B of the 117th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. The ledger includes daily medical reports from January 24th to April 15, 1863. During this time the company was stationed at Ft. Pickering, Tenn. defending Memphis. Patients are listed by name and action (i.e. excused from duty, assigned modified duty, sent to hospital, or quarantine). A small loose piece of paper -- possibly a prescription or doctor's note -- is included among the pages.

This collection consists of two letters written by Adam Loy of the 89th Indiana Infantry to his wife Sarah Loy. The first letter is written from Memphis, Tennessee and is dated May 21, 1863. The second letter is dated May 23. Loy writes of his experiences in the infantry.

In this letter to his sister Beulah, Union army soldier Josh reports that his orders are to head to Mississippi on 1863 May 10. He is unhappy at the prospect of leaving his current lodgings at a Secesh woman's home, but glad to escape the rampant spread of smallpox through Memphis, Tennessee.

This letter is addressed to Mrs. Sylvia (possibly Julia) Kimbler from Union soldier Maggie in Memphis, Tennessee. The author mentions a few details about the movement of his regiment and inquires as to why Mrs. Kimbler has not yet responded to his four previous letters.

The six photographs of this collection depict scenes of Union soldiers at Lookout Mountain and also war grounds along the Tennessee River and in Augusta, Georgia during the Civil War. The four lantern slides in this collection depict various Civil War battles and naval scenes.

In a July 8, 1864 note, Col. George Patterson is commanded to report for citizen train guard in Memphis. Attached to the note are two newspaper clippings related to Special Order No. 74, requiring prominent Memphis secessionists to ride trains from Memphis to LaGrange in order to curb attacks on the railroads by Confederates.

A travel pass issued by John E. McDermot of the 108th Illinois Infantry at Union headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee on May 2, 1865. It allowed J. T. Willis, his wife, and their four children to pass through Union lines for a period of 30 days without facing arrest.

This collection consists of a four page report detailing events in the Memphis, Tennessee district of the Freedmen's Bureau during the month of May 1864. The writer, Captain T. A. Walker of the 63rd Infantry Regiment (Colored Troops), describes the city of Memphis (particularly its schools) as well as the contraband camps of Holly Springs, Shiloh, and President's Island.

Wilbur P. Buck wrote these three letters, dated between October 9, 1862 and June 23, 1863, to his sweetheart, Charlotte Lottie Smith. The first letter was sent from Camp Fuller and the others were written at the Officer's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. They discuss Buck and Smith's relationship, Buck's homesickness, and the wounded and dead soldiers that Buck sees in the field hospital where he works.

This collection houses 22 letters written between various members of the Wildermuth family during the Civil War. Brothers John, Henry, and Eli Wildermuth wrote much of this correspondence while serving in the Union Army and discuss such topics as life in the South, the battles they have experienced, their living conditions, and their desire to return home to Wisconsin.

This collection consists of ten letters and five envelopes from Union soldier William Styer to his wife Susannah (Defenbaugh) Styer dating from 1862 November 12 to 1863 September 5. One letter was written in Camp Morton, Indiana; one was written on board the Ohio Belle; and the rest were written from Fort Pickering, Tennessee.

Three letters from Private William Taylor of the 43rd Ohio Infantry to his sister Susan in Morrow County, Ohio, describe experiences in the Gayoso Hospital in Memphis and another military hospital in LaGrange, Tenn., during 1863.