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Camp in the Mid Tenn.July 5th 1863Dear Companion I received your letter of the 26th yesterday and supposing no doubt that you are anxious to hear from me I hastily drop these few lines to let you know that I am safe and in excellent health, notwithstanding I have endured more hardships and exposures sinceContinue reading “Tullahoma Campaign – Taking Middle Tennessee.”

Barracks No. 1.  Nashville, TennMar 13, 1863Dear Wife As I have but little else to do but write, I expect I will make you tired of reading my uninteresting scribbling.  But I don’t expect to write so often hereafter as I expect to go to the Regiment today or tomorrow as it is reported thatContinue reading “Jacob’s Visit to Maxwell House (aka, Zollicoffer Barracks) – Nashville, Tennessee”

General Hospital, Gallipolis Jan 31st 1863Dear Wife, I have just received your kind letter of Thursday last.  I am getting along very well yet much better than I could expect the only difficulty now is I feel too well to be confined indoors.  I have a very bad cough yet but it is getting somewhat looseContinue reading “General Hospital, Gallipolis Ohio – Jan 1863”

Gauley, Fayette Co, VA,  Nov the  5th 1862Dear Mary,I have not heard from you since the 23rd of Oct.  I am well and am enjoying myself as well as ever I have done since I have been in the Army.  I wrote a letter to you last Sabbath in a barn near Charleston.  Monday morningContinue reading “Kanawah Falls – 5 Nov, 1862”

Sept 5, 1862  I was not a little surprised yesterday whilst writing to hear the order given to form in line of battle immediately as the enemy was coming.  We were formed and marched to Fort Mitchel and stood there in line of battle 5 hours expecting every moment to see the enemy approach.  ButContinue reading “Fort Mitchell, Kentucky – 5 Sept, 1862”

My ancestor, Jacob Shively, arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, on 7 March 1863, with a group of soldiers trying to rejoin their regiments after convalescing at home in Ohio.  The next day, he wrote his wife about “the largest building I ever saw.”  He described it as “200 feet long, 180 wide and 7 stories high.”  He wrote fromContinue reading “Nashville’s Maxwell House & Joel Cheek’s Coffee Empire”

Coffee was not always ubiquitous in the United States. In 1790, the U.S. imported 4 million pounds of coffee and 3 million pounds of tea (see Table 1). Even with the negative connotations tea had appropriated in the patriotic fervor of the American independence era (most famously demonstrated at Boston’s 1773 “Tea Party”), coffee wasContinue reading “Postbellum Coffee and Tea Consumption in the United States”