Civil War Letters

The Civil War Letters of Wellesley College and Brandeis University project was funded by a Civil War Preservation Grant from the Massachusetts Sesquicentennial Commission of the American Civil War. The project idea was born as a collaboration between the two academic institutions, both members of the Boston Library Consortium, with the intention of creating an openly available online academic resource to reach students, scholars, and researchers interested in exploring the voices of those who were deeply involved in the Civil War. This website presents several paths to that exploration, from lesson plans and timelines to maps and voice recordings.

At the core of this website are the Wellesley and Brandeis holdings of correspondence between Civil War soldiers and their families. Each letter in Wellesley’s Catharine Mitchill ‘31 Collection of Family Letters and Brandeis’s Michael Lally Civil War letters has been digitized and almost all have been transcribed.

Users can also access a digital timeline, a map, lesson plans, and audio recordings of selected letters.

A kickoff event was held at the Rapaporte Treasure Hall in Goldfarb Library at Brandeis University on November 11, 2015.

LTS Staff: Ian Graham, Jenifer Bartle, Kara Hart, Mariana Oller
Keywords: Civil War correspondence, Special Collections, Omeka, Digital Scholarship Initiatives (DSI) program