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The richest sources on life in the nineteenth century
are
also the rarest: private letters and diaries. Such records reveal
people's thoughts and feelings in a way other records cannot. Several
people in Augusta and Franklin kept detailed diaries during the Civil War,
but
such records are much less common for the years before the conflict.
We have searched carefully for pre-war letters and original manuscript
sources. The following materials came largely from the collections at
The University of Virginia Library, The Library of Congress,
and local history societies, such as the Augusta Co. Historical
Society and the Kittochtinny Historical Society. We have included
only pre-Civil War documents here. If you would like to view
our collection of Civil War letters, please go to Part II The War Years.
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