Explore both the intimate world of small-town Massachusetts and the camp life of a volunteer company of men thrown into the turmoil of the Civil War through this rare collection of over 60 thoroughly annotated and thoroughly enjoyable letters.

In 1862 a volunteer company of men (46th Massachusetts Regiment) from Brimfield, Holland, Monson, and Wales, all towns in Hampden County Massachusetts, answered the call to save the Union and served in North Carolina under their elected captain, Francis D Lincoln, a Brimfield farmer. Nearly 150 years later, the letters Frank Lincoln wrote to his wife Rebecca back home, and those she wrote to him, came to light.

This remarkable correspondence, edited by long-time Brimfield residents Larry and Koren Lowenthal, reveals the trials of men at war and far from home, and the lives and pain of the families they left behind. The frank and open relationship of the couple, their sensibility and sense of humor, and their sharp intellect illuminate a chapter of the nation's great struggle.

Both the soldier's perspective and the life of the spouse left behind at the homestead are presented, providing a unique opportunity to follow the plight of a couple affected by the nation at war.

Larry Lowenthal is also the author of the following:
Morris County Traction Company
Titanic Railroad: the Southern New England, the Story of New England's Last Great Railroad War
Iron Mine Railroads of Northern New Jersey
The Lackawanna Railroad in Northwest New Jersey
From the Coalfields to the Hudson: a History of the Delaware & Hudson Canal
Marinus Willett, Defender of the Northern Frontier