The Museum of the Confederacy's Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library recently received four pocket diaries of Sgt. John F. Charlton of Co. F, 5th Louisiana Infantry. The entry for the diaries in our Diary Collection inventory is:

4 pocket diaries (1) memo and account book from April 28, 1860 with diary entries for January 1-March 13, 1861; (2) “memorandum of places and incidents” [May-July 1861] with diary entries August 15-November 7, 1861; (3) diary entries for May 4, 18, 23, 26-31, 1861, June 1-28, 1861, August 15, 1861-February 12, 1862; (4) diary entries for November 7, 1863-November 6, 1864; “crossed” and often illegibly faded entries beginning November 7, 1864-ca. February 6, 1865

The Charlton diaries join other important Louisiana manuscript sources in the Museum's Brockenbrough Library. We transcribed and published the best of those sources related to the Washington Artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia (including letters of Fred Brode and Edward Apps and the pocket diaries of John B. Richardson and Edward Owen) in Vol. V, no. 1 of the journal, Civil War Regiments (1996). Back issues of that issue are available through the Museum's Haversack Shop.

Other important Louisiana records include:

Order book, 9th Louisiana Infantry, November 26, 1861- July 2, 1862 (145 pp.)

Small Collections of letters by Louisiana soldiers:

Capt. E. L. Coleman, 4th Bn. Louisiana Infantry
3 letters, September 1862-January 1863

Sgt. Daniel D. Logan
Rightor’s Battalion, Louisiana; Hampton’s Legion
8 letters, July-November 1861 (Newport News, Williamsburg, Yorktown)

Lt. Jefferson Davis Van Benthuysen, 6th Louisiana Infantry, Co. G
5 letters, 1861 (2), 1862 (1), 1864 (2 from Johnson’s Island) and other letters written to

Pvt. Theodore H. Woodard, Co. D, 6th Louisiana Infantry
5 letters, 1861, 1865
[excerpts of these letters were published in January 2003 issue of America’s Civil War]

For more information about these and other sources and how to obtain copies of them, contact the library via email at library@moc.org