Patricia A. Donohoe - The Printers Kiss: The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family

CIVIL WAR IN THE NORTH

Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union
John M. Belohlavek

Banners South: A Northern Community at War
Edmund J. Raus

Circumstances are destiny: An Antebellum Womans Struggle to Define Sphere
Tina Stewart Brakebill

More Than a Contest between Armies: Essays on the Civil War
Edited by James Marten and A. Kristen Foster

August Willichs Gallant Dutchmen:
Civil War Letters from the 32nd Indiana Infantry
Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart

Meades Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman
Edited by David W. Lowe

Dispatches from Bermuda:
The Civil War Letters of Charles Maxwell Allen, U.S. Consul at Bermuda,
18611888
Edited by Glen N. Wiche

The Antebellum Crisis and Americas First Bohemians
Mark A. Lause

Orlando M. Poe: Civil War General and Great Lakes Engineer
Paul Taylor

Northerners at War: Reflections on the Civil War Home Front
J. Matthew Gallman

A German Hurrah!
Civil War Letters of Friedrich Bertsch and Wilhelm Stngel, 9th Ohio Infantry
Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart

They Have Left Us Here to Die:
The Civil War Prison Diary of Sgt. Lyle G. Adair, 111th U.S. Colored Infantry
Edited by Glenn Robins

The Story of a Thousand:
Being a History of the Service of the 105th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the
War for the Union, from August 21, 1862, to June 6, 1865
Albion W. Tourgee, Edited by Peter C. Luebke

The Election of 1860 Reconsidered
Edited by A. James Fuller

A Punishment on the Nation: An Iowa Soldier Endures the Civil War
Edited by Brian Craig Miller

Yankee Dutchmen under Fire: Civil War Letters from the 82nd Illinois Infantry
Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart

The Printers Kiss:
The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family
Edited by Patricia A. Donohoe

IT ALL BEGAN with my sisters curiosity. My sister and I were in Portsmouth, Ohio, for our fathers funeral in 1970 and staying at our grandparents house. My sister, Betsy, asked our Aunt Betsy why an old green and white cracker tin was wedged between some books on a hallway shelf. Our Aunt Betsy, for whom my sister was named, took the tin down, blew some dust off the top, and lifted the lid. Inside, pressed together like fragile pages in an ancient tome, were dozens of old letters from our ancestors. Seeing our excitement about the letters, our aunt passed them on to us. She then took us up to an attic cubbyhole over the front porch and unlocked a Hobbit-sized door to a tiny closet. As we knelt down beneath the eaves, we found boxes of other family documents. Among them was an original copy of the October 10, 1863, edition of the Loyal Scout, the last newspaper published by our great-great-grandfather, Will Tomlinson.

Over the years my sister and I took turns being steward of the letters. We yearned to do something with them but never found the time. Occasionally when we were together, we would carefully ease some letters out from the old tin, gently unfold them, and try to decipher their contents. Who were these people? What were their lives like, and what did that mean for us? Yes, they were our ancestors, but how much of our identities sprang from theirs? One question would beget another and another until, overwhelmed with the time and energy it would take to answer them, we would close the tin once more and put it back on the shelf for another day. It was the time of life when we were busy raising families, pursuing careers, acquiring additional educational credentials, and moving back and forth across the country. The letters still beckoned, however, and sometimes we felt guilty that they lay there, waiting for our attention. My sister and I had both taught English and then had successful careers in communications. Surely, we thought, we were equipped to do something with the collection. But exactly whatand wheneluded us.

Eventually, in 1999, when my children were grown and I was between careers, I had time to transcribe all the letters in the tin, about 140 of them, plus assorted documents. In the process, I discovered that my interest in doing something with the collection was becoming a driving passion. My sisters passion, meanwhile, led in another direction, to an accomplished career in education. In September 2000, my career path also led in another direction when I was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). I was excited about serving as the associate minister of the Presbyterian church in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but disappointed that my work with the letter collection would have to be put on hold.

In the autumn of 2003, as I was approaching my fifty-ninth birthday and grandchildren were beginning to proliferate in our family, I realized that if I were ever going to do anything with the letter collection, I had to get serious about it. Thanks to my husband, Dave, and his enthusiastic support, I had an opportunity to retire from my ministerial position and spend more time working on the letter collection. I made the heart-wrenching decision to leave a congregation I felt deeply connected to and, with a lot of gratitude and a little trepidation, began devoting my working time to the letter collection.

During the three years I served the church, I continued working on the letter collection whenever I could, and Dave and I visited Ripley, Ohio, to research my family history. On our first trip there we were fortunate to meet the director of Union Township Library, Alison Gibson. She and I stayed in touch, and in January 2006, Alison sent me an email with startling news. Letters from the Tomlinson family were for sale on eBay! I had never been on eBay and would never have looked there for letters written by my ancestors. But there they were! Thanks to Alison and helpful eBay vendors, I was able to purchase at least another 150 letters over the next several years. EBay vendors I contacted said they purchased the letters in New York, where my great-grandfathers sister lived. I was unable to acquire about a half dozen letters posted on eBay, including one that appeared on the site in March 2013. But finally, some 150 years after apparently being divided by my great-grandfather and his sister, most of the letters have come back together. Perhaps even more remarkable is that they came together while I, a direct descendant of Will and Eliza Wylie Tomlinson, was working on a book using the letters that had been passed down to my sister and me.