Posted on 11/30/2013 6:38:17 AM PST by NYer
Finding a treasured piece of history hidden in a file cabinet may be the dream of many, but it happened to Stuyvesant Town Historian Juanita Knott. She recently found what could be handwritten copies of an 1864 newspaper, “The Old Flag” which lists pages of Union soldier prisoners of war during the Civil War, including those from New York state.
“I’m not sure if they’re copies or hand-written,” Knott said, carefully turning the yellow, almost crumbling pages of “The Old Flag” newspaper that she had clipped to acid-free paper so as not to destroy this voice from the past.
“It’s much too fragile to scan or photocopy,” Knott added.
According to The Handwritten Newspapers Project, an annotated bibliography and historical research guide to handwritten newspapers from around the world, “The Old Flag” was published by Union soldier Captain William H. May of the 23rd Connecticut Volunteers. May was also said to be a newspaper man in civilian life.
The Handwritten Newspapers Project states that only one copy of each numbered issue was published. The newspaper was written to break up the monotony of prison life, which, according to the project, included fresh water, food, shelter and even local trading at Camp Ford, Texas from 1863 to 1864. Each issue was read aloud as it was passed to prisoners in various cabins.
Local news, poetry art, satire, chess problems, advertisements and tongue-in-cheek jokes cover the three-column, four-page newspapers originally written with pen and ink. Lists of prisoners of war, including their rank, regiment and where and when captured are given their own pages.
“I hope to find at least one soldier from Columbia County. I’ve really just started on this,” Knott said.
This local historian by day, history detective by night said she is trying to find out how the newspapers got into the file and whether they are originals or copies.
“Playing detective is fun. This really makes me curious. We have more questions than answers at this point,” Knott said. “It’s a very interesting project. It may be overwhelming, too. The more people interested in it, the more answers we might find.”
A humorous excerpt from “The Old Flag” March 13, 1864 Issue No. 3 in the Stuyvesant archive states, “The ruffians even went so far as to dig a trench which they declared should be our Editorial Grave but as the immortal Webster once said, ‘We ain’t dead yet!’”
According to the book, “Stories of Stuyvesant,” by former town historian Priscilla B. Frisbee and Knott, Stuyvesant had some historic moments during the Civil War.
In 1862, railway switchman Patrick “Granther” Sweeney saved a troop train from colliding with a northbound express train.
In 1865, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train passed by the rail station in Stuyvesant according to a printed schedule.
Interesting. Thanks for posting this.
“In 1865, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train passed by the rail station in Stuyvesant according to a printed schedule.”
This was a relative’s first memory, seeing his funeral procession. And another, on my mother’s side, had her first job sewing the black (silk?) crepe for it.
A small area called Sharon Twnshp., east of the Hudson.
He, his wife, and a son or two are buried in a cemetery on private property east of Troy.
I grew up in the Finger Lakes area and went to school in Albany, so I’m quite familiar with those parts of the state.
NYC, not so much, and having been there a couple times, I don’t miss it at all!
I believe the listed officers were all from NY units - several of them were taken at Bayou Boeuf, now part of Thibodeaux, LA. The reference to Doc Milsap and his pretty wife Hannah is purely whimsical and stems from Jerry Reed’s kick ass song ‘Amos Moses’. For a truly fine treatment of Confederate operations against the invaders in south Louisiana, see ‘Destruction and Reconstruction”, by LtGen Richard Taylor, CSA, [son of Zachary Taylor] who was personally involved in many of the actions
Seems to have a very cool history behind it
Ha! You guys never, ever quit, do you?
You just must, must rewrite every available history to suit your own Lost Cause purposes, don't you?
So let me ask, do you even know the real truth of this matter, or did you just make this up out of whole cloth?
Here is the truth of the matter:
Proponents justified such a move by noting that Southerners had contributed to Federal pensions through indirect taxes since the end of the war.
These proposals met with mixed responses in both North and the South, but overwhelmingly, opposition came from those financially comfortable Confederate veterans and southern politicians who regarded such dependency on Federal assistance a dishonor to the Lost Cause.
It should be noted that impoverished Southern veterans frequently were not averse to the prospect of receiving Federal pensions.
In any event, no such law ever passed, and Confederate veterans and their widows never matriculated into the Federal pension system."
Of course, pensions were paid by former Confederate state governments to their veterans, amongst whom were doubtless some black soldiers whose claimed military rank was changed by those Confederate state governments from whatever to "servant".
Indeed, since by all accounts there were far more black Union soldiers (178,000) than actual black Confederate soldiers (3,273 claimed to be veterans in 1890), one wonders if maybe a certain confusion had already set in as to who, exactly, was on which side?
We see that today in the numbers who can correctly name Lincoln's political party, or the party of slave-holders.
Of course, I understand how tempting it is to accuse others of your own sins -- Democrat politicos make their livings doing that -- but it only works if nobody knows what really happened.
And it's not pretty, so you need to stop it.
;-)
There’s an app for that.
I use an iPhone app that scans via photo, turns the scan into a regular .pdf file. One of the most useful apps I’ve ever used—I scan in bills and payments sent so I always have a copy at hand if needed.
I also ‘scan’ my large format negatives (4x5 and 5x7 inch) using my DSLR and a light box. Cheaper and good enough quality for web postings. A quality scanner that can handle large format is $700-1000.
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