Hi List Members, Lately, I have seen list members mention that they have diaries, memoirs, or letters from ancestors during the War. What treasures these are! After reading the posting from Mr. Howard Soloman, I emailed him personally to give him an idea about preservation of documents such as these and I also wanted to share some ideas with the list. If by chance you have a diary, memoirs, or letters, one good idea is to put them on loan to a credible university library. An agreement should be made with the library concerning such things as publishing rights, time of the loan, etc. Many university libraries are able to safely hold and care for these documents so they will be around for many generations to come. On a personal note regarding this, my German GG Grandfather, Baron William Henry von Eberstein, wrote the memoirs of his life before his death in 1890. During the War, he served with Company K, 10th North Carolina State Troops (Heavy Artillery) as 5th (Orderly) Sergeant and later transferred to the Field and Staff of the NC 61st Infantry Regiment, where he was promoted to Sergeant Major. The last family member who had possession of the original memoir was a cousin and my Godmother, and upon her death, gave them to Joyner Library at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. They are now a part of the Special Collections Department and have been used as a source of information for several books, a student's Master's Thesis, etc. I obtained a copy from the library, and over the past couple of years have painstakingly transcribed one part, and soon hope to have the portion regarding his war career published. It was most interesting doing the transcribing, although somet! imes it was very frustrating. Being fluent in several languages, the entire manuscript was written in English, but there were also things done in French and German. Just in case there may be some interest in this, I'll give a website that the Special Collections Department of the library did that shows an extract of what is contained in these memoirs. http://www.lib.ecu.edu/SpclColl/ead/vault/frmvault/0148.frame.html On my wife's side, the letters of her Great Grandfather, Major General Bryan Grimes, that he wrote home to his wife are located and protected at the library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The University library has also put extracts from the letters on a website at http://docsouth.unc.edu/grimes/menu.html if anyone is interested. As I said before, things such as these are such treasures, and it's always so fantastic to be able to read firsthand accounts of the War. We just need to make sure they are protected and saved for our future generations. Best regards to all, Edward