Antiques Roadshow and a Civil War Journal

Susan and I have been lucky enough to win the Antiques Roadshow ticket lottery!! We will be heading out for a future Roadshow and are taking some interesting items ... we hope interesting enough to make it to the taping and maybe appear on the show! We will let you know how it goes when we go there.

Meantime, here is the story of a Civil War journal I am taking. (Other items to follow.)

I got this fantastic ledger about seven years ago. It was with some other ledgers and journals I picked up at an auction. Most were just nice old books, but one is truly special. It is the Short Autobiography of the Writer's Life by Mrs. Sarah Frances Hershey. WOW!

Sarah went by the name "Sallie." She was born Sarah Frances Walker in the little village of Gap, Pennsylvania in 1849. She lived her whole life in Gap and Philadelphia. Married Jacob Henry "Harry" Bair Hershey in 1871. Harry was born a year to the day after Sallie in 1850.

Sarah Frances Walker Hershey passed away barely six months after finishing this journal. In her lifetime she accomplished much. She bore five children, endured the loss of three when they were very young and raising two beyond youth and into successful lives. She tended to both house and business … as it appears that Henry Hershey was only able to earn enough to cover the bare needs of house and home.

She was clearly intelligent, well-read and a capable author and poet. I have accumulated many of her poems and stories in an additional book. Many of these are excellent … both in content and in thought. Her talents were rewarded by having many of her poems published in the Christiana Ledger.

Sallie began writing her autobiography in 1906, detailing her upbringing and how her family dealt with the Civil War, including the exploits of her brother who fled to Canada to escape the draft and her sister who worked in a confederate hospital and ran through enemy lines to bring medicine from Pennsylvania to Richmond for her patients. The family was conflicted by the war ... they had sympathies with the southern people, but were not in favor of slavery ... even more so as Mennonites, they were against war.

Sallie continued writing in the book as a journal from 1906 to her death in 1911. In the frugal fashion of her day, she used the back of the book to record the transctions from her "business" dealings and the center of the book as a scrapbook.

Photos, of course do not really do justice to this autobiography/journal/ledger/scrapbook. We will see if the Roadshow appraisers think it is a significant item or not. I know that I consider it a real treasure.