Gary Doster's [Athens, GA] newest book is coming off the printing press and ready for shipping next week. It is titled "Dear Sallie ... : The Letters of Confederate Private James Jewel, Echols Light Artillery, Oglethorpe County, Georgia."
James Jewel enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862 with numerous friends from Oglethorpe and Greene counties, east of Athens, Georgia. He briefly served in the Atlanta area.
In January 1863, Jewel’s unit moved to north Florida, where 68 of his letters present a new and unreported soldier’s perspective from that area. While in the Florida Panhandle, these Georgians helped protect the “backdoor of the Confederacy” as they guarded the area’s valuable salt works along the Gulf Coast. They also prevented Yankee gunboats from moving up the Apalachicola River and gaining access to northwest Florida and the interior of Alabama and Georgia. Jewel’s Florida letters were written from Quincy, Tallahassee, Camp Brokaw, Camp Leon, Camp Limkins, and Camp Sidney Johnston and make clear for the first time the location of these camps and their use in the Confederate war effort. His pen painted a vivid picture of life in Florida’s wartime panhandle as he gave vivid descriptions of the land, the people and the homes. He also had much to say about his fellow soldiers, their living conditions, the weather, the food, sickness and the insects that plagued them almost constantly.
This book also contains eighteen letters written by Jewel’s teenage sister Sallie and one letter by Jewel’s wife, Eliza. Their correspondence reinforces our knowledge of the wartime difficulties endured by women and their families throughout the South.
Sadly, these letters follow the trail of James Jewel and his fellow artillerymen as they moved toward Jacksonville, Savannah and Charleston to help slow William Sherman’s Union army in late 1864 and early 1865. The end would come for Private Jewel in March 1865 at Averasboro, North Carolina. Tragically, his family to this day has no idea what happened to him or where he is buried. They only know that the scanty Confederate records listed him as missing in action.
Gary Doster has provided a true service to students, historians and genealogists by first preserving and then transcribing these letters. Through painstaking detective work he has noted for the reader the background regarding the numerous people, places and things listed throughout the pages. Several appendices provide genealogical tables and obituary information for Jewel’s family members, but the book also contains another valuable element – the first comprehensive roster ever published of Georgians who served in the Echols Light Artillery.

More info on the book and ordering instructions are available at www.AngleValleyPress.com