Harriet and I are pleased to announce October 6 as the publication date for Beloved Companion, a nonfiction Civil War book that almost ended up in the trashcan. Subtitled “The Inspiring Civil War Letters of a Soldier, His Wife and Their Faith in God,” Beloved Companion is a series of 80 letters between Harriet’s great-great Pennsylvania grandparents during the final ten months of the Civil War in Virginia.
After the death of Harriet’s father in 2006 and her mother in 2007, Harriet and her sister Annell asked me if I would go through their parents’ papers and cull things of value for posterity and discard the rest. As I was a family historian and part-time genealogist, I agreed to their request, not realizing there were twenty-four banker’s boxes of papers and records among their possessions.
My late father-in-law was a serious, talented, and patient genealogist, so much so that he actually did family research for others. His genealogy work on families unrelated to Harriet’s and Annell’s kinfolks made my culling task much more difficult since I had to sort out what related to Kocher genealogy and what related to the ancestry of other people.
It was a tedious process, trying to sort family from non-family records. Finally, I got to the last banker’s box and pulled out an opaque white plastic bag with “Water—A liquid Asset. Use It Wisely” from the New Jersey-American Water Company. My first thought was why did they keep such junk and my second impulse was to just trash it without looking inside. Then my conscience got the better of me, once I realized I had come this far over the previous six weeks going through every document and file, so I needed to finish the task Harriet and Annell had asked me to perform in honor of their parents.
So, I opened the bag and to my utter shock found more than eighty Civil War letters between Harriet’s and Annell’s great-great grandparents—James and Frances Catherine Wood—during the last ten months of the conflict. I was thrilled with my fortuitous find because I love American history, especially with the period between the start of the Civil War and the end of World War II. I was holding history in my hands and couldn’t believe I had considered trashing the little plastic bag without looking inside.
While I had known of James Wood’s Civil War service because of a diary he had kept as a private in the 199th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, I did not realize that any Civil War letters had survived. The original of the diary is in the possession of one of Harriet’s and Annell’s cousins, but a typescript had long circulated among the Kocher (a German surname pronounced “Coker”) family. Harriet and I had a copy of that typescript.
Additionally, Harriet’s namesake aunt, Harriet Kocher gave us a sheet of “Rebel paper,” as James Wood called the ledger page discarded by Confederates in their retreat to Appomattox. On it he wrote his road notes of what he saw during the ten days leading up to the surrender of Lee’s army at Appomattox Court House.
When we started compiling the work, we realized the documents were not just a story of the Civil War but also a couple’s faith in God to get them through the conflict and the winter of 1864-65. It was refreshing to read the writings of a couple so secure in their faith.
Here are some excerpts:
Was detailed for camp guard, and while on guard mount the word came that the regiment must attend the execution of a deserter …. I shall never want to see another such sight while I live.—James Wood, diary, December 26, 1864
We have had a cold storm, but I wore your shoes. Do you not think it a good woman that can step in her husband’s shoes?—Frances Wood, letter, October 30, 1864
Saw the dead still on the field. Saw thirty-two cannon that were captured in the morning, and then the news came that General Lee had surrendered to General Grant. Great cheering!—James Wood, Appomattox road notes, April 9, 1865
This will be the second fall release from our Bariso Press and the sixth we have co-authored since 2023. The Kindle version of Beloved Companion is now up on Amazon for pre-order and the trade paperback and hardback will be up shortly.
