EDMESTON — An overflow crowd spent President's Day hearing about local soldiers who served in the Civil War at a special presentation by the Edmeston Museum.
Nearly 40 people attended the mid-afternoon reading Monday, Feb. 17, forcing it to move from the museum to the Edmeston Town Court, downstairs in the same building, at 1 North St.
"You are all guilty of loving history," Edmeston Museum Director Deb Mackenzie said. "This is a great number of people. Civil War history brings out the best."
Mackenzie said a school group visited the museum recently and when she pulled out the box of Civil War era letters the museum has in its collection to show the kids, the large amount of letters shocked even her.
Monday, Mackenzie read parts of letters from three local soldiers: George Mattison of Pittsfield; Aaron Stephens, a principal musician from Edmeston; and "a guy named Dan.
"We can't figure out his last name," she said.
All three men sent letters to relatives in the area, she said.
Many of the letters are upbeat despite the conditions, although some veer toward sarcasm.
"I take this opportunity to write you a few lines and let you know I am not dead, yet," Mattison wrote in April 1864* from Louisiana.
Early in the war, Mattison is matter of fact about a younger brother getting drafted, Mackenzie said, but in later letters he becomes adamant his parents pay for another brother to avoid service.
"When you hear his letters, you'll immediately see how soldiers came to feel about the war," she said. "I think he was probably a good representation of all Civil War soldiers, based on what he wrote."
The upstate men all disliked the weather down south, according to their letters.
"There is nothing here that would cheer the heart," Stephens wrote from Virginia, "as there is up there where nature seems to smile on everything."
Sometimes the letters chronicle history, as Stephens discusses his regiment's pursuit of Stonewall Jackson near Harpers Ferry before the Confederate General's death in 1863. Other times the letters seem to invent new history, such as Dan's discussion of a major victory by Union forces in 1862.
"I wish you could see the place where our men schooled the Rebels," he wrote in September 1862, when Union victories were scarce.
The men often asked to be sent letters and more stamps, and they were often filled with reassurances, Mackenzie said.
"You must not worry," Mattison wrote his parents from Louisiana in 1864. "I will come out fine in the end."
Go to the Edmeston Museum on Facebook to learn more about the museum.
*changed at 7:37 a.m. Feb. 18 to correct the year.
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