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228 pages

English

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In language that resonates with power and beauty, this compilation of personal letters written from 1844 to 1864 tells the compelling story of controversial newspaper editor Will Tomlinson, his opinionated wife (Eliza Wylie Tomlinson), and their two children (Byers and Belle) in the treacherous borderlands around that "abolitionist hellhole," Ripley, Ohio. The Printer's Kiss includes many of Tomlinson's columns that appeared in the Ripley Bee, the local Ripley newspaper, and excerpts from a short story in the Columbian Magazine. It features many of his letters to his family and a remarkable number of letters from Eliza and the children to Tomlinson while he was away during the Civil War, serving variously as quartermaster sergeant for the Fifth Ohio, as captain of a company of counterinsurgents in West Virginia, as an independent scout and spy in Kentucky, as a nurse on a hospital boat, and as a compositor for the Cincinnati Gazette. During his career, Tomlinson published ten newspapers in Ohio and one in Iowa, where he lived from 1854 to 1860. Described by his contemporaries as brilliant and erratic, coarse and literary, Tomlinson left a trail of ink covering topics ranging from antislavery sentiment to spiritualist fervor and partisan politics. His personal writings reveal the man behind the press, disappointed by his weakness for alcohol and by Eliza's refusal to condone his plan to raise a Negro company. His eloquent descriptions ache with the discomfort of standing fourteen hours at a compositor's table, shooting cattle to feed soldiers, and having to defend himself against accusations of adultery. Tomlinson was fatally shot by a Kentucky Copperhead in 1863.Eliza's letters pulse with the fears of a Union family on the lookout for slave hunters, Morgan's Raiders, and bad news from the battlefield. Like her husband, she freely condemns inept politicians and southern rebels. She also questions her husband's military competence, but she usually writes about domestic matters - the children, friends, and finances.The intimate details in these letters will engage readers with suspenseful accounts of survival in the borderlands during the Civil War, camp life, and guerrilla warfare and commentary on political and military events, journalism in the mid-1800s, and the roles of women and children. Most importantly, readers will be exposed to the story of how one articulate and loyal Union family refused to give up hope when faced with tragic disruption.

Sujets

Histoire

USA

United States of America

Diaries

History of the Americas

American Civil War

États-Unis

Guerre de Sécession

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Publié par	The Kent State University Press
Date de parution	25 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781612778402
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE PRINTER’S KISS
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 Woman’s 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 Willich’s Gallant Dutchmen: Civil War Letters from the 32nd Indiana Infantry Translated and Edited by Joseph R. Reinhart
Meade’s 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, 1861–1888 Edited by Glen N. Wiche
The Antebellum Crisis and America’s 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 Stängel, 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 Printer’s Kiss: The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family Edited by Patricia A. Donohoe
The Printer’s Kiss
The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family

Edited by
Patricia A. Donohoe
T HE K ENT S TATE U NIVERSITY P RESS
Kent, Ohio
© 2014 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2013049038
ISBN 978-1-60635-216-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The printer’s kiss : the life and letters of a Civil War newspaperman and his family /
edited by Patricia A. Donohoe.
pages cm. — (Civil War in the North)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60635-216-8 (hardcover) ∞
1. Tomlinson, Will, 1823–1863.
2. Newspaper editors—United States—Biography.
3. Tomlinson, Will, 1823–1863—Correspondence.
4. Tomlinson, Eliza Wylie, 1815–1885—Correspondence.
5. Tomlinson, William Byers, 1847–1917—Correspondence.
6. Tomlinson, Sarah Isabella, 1853–1925—Correspondence.
I. Donohoe, Patricia A., 1944– editor of compilation.
II. Tomlinson, Will, 1823–1863. Correspondence. Selections.
PN 4874. T 5955 P 75 2014
070.4’1092—dc23
[B]
2013049038
18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
To the descendants of Will and Eliza Wylie Tomlinson and their sisters and brothers in spirit
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Editing Notes
Cast of Historical Characters
1. Tomlinson’s Origins
2. Eliza’s Heritage
3. Bringing Forth
4. Looking for Relief
5. Together and Apart
6. Collision Courses
7. Volunteer Frenzy
8. Rushed Waiting
9. Into the Hills
10. Curse This Idleness
11. Mustering Men and Courage
12. Mountain Desperadoes
13. Disarmed
14. Hatching New Hope
15. Attacks from Within and Without
16. This Sea of Passion
17. Nursing the Wounded
18. Close to Home
19. Partisan Fever
20. Freedom’s Casket
Epilogue: The Journey of the Letters
Appendix
Notes
Selected References
Index
Preface
I T ALL BEGAN with my sister’s curiosity. My sister and I were in Portsmouth, Ohio, for our father’s funeral in 1970 and staying at our grandparent’s 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 what—and when—eluded 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 sister’s 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-grandfather’s 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.
The Wylie-Tomlinson Letter Collection now includes approximately 300 personal letters, plus assorted documents, written from the 1830s through the 1890s. These letters have never been published before. In The Printer’s Kiss I have used the heart of the collection, 124 letters written from 1844 to 1864, to tell the story of my great-great-grandparents, Will and Eliza Wylie Tomlinson. I have also included published versions of letters Tomlinson and his wife wrote to newspaper editors, as well as excerpts from letters in other collections, from newspapers Tomlinson edited, and from his short story in Columbian Magazine . In addition, I have integrated carefully researched background material to provide a historical backdrop for the letters and flesh out the story they tell. My time with the Wylie-Tomlinson Letter Collection and The Printer’s Kiss has been full of unexpected discoveries and rewards. My hope is that yours will be, too.
Patricia A. Donohoe
October 2013
Acknowledgments
L ITTLE IN LIFE is done solo, least of all a book based on the work of others. So many people have contributed to The Printer’s Kiss that it would take another book to list them with their contributions and thank them in the manner they deserve. For all of the resources, expertise, and encouragement that so many have so generously shared on my forty-year sojourn with the Wylie-Tomlinson Letter Collection and the fifteen-year book project that emerged from it, I will always be grateful. Without their help, this book would ne