During and after the Civil War sometimes soldiers and family held onto letters and other sources of information. More than 150 years later some families documents and artifacts remain in the families hands but they are no longer interested in them for history's sake an choose to sell them or give them away or sometimes just dump them in the trash.

I have a fried who shall remain nameless and buys these treasure troves occasionally from the families who decide to sell them rather than to keep them. Naturally this friend of mine has other friends who pretty much do the same thing as he does and this is the story of his friends most recent buy from a family.

I do not know what time period this happened in the war only that it did and I do not know how the family acquired the journal.

The best guess was that it belonged to a Union clerk or doctor who was at Camp Douglas, Illinois. Inside of this journal were medical records of Confederates who were sick at the hospital at Camp Douglass. They listed the name; rank unit and regimental number and State. I ask my friend to ask his friend if any of the sick at Camp Douglass belonged to the 7th Regiment Mississippi Infantry and just to give me one name if they are listed. I'll let the board know if anything shows up.

As for my friend he bought from a totally different family, 4 Civil War rifles and one or two revolvers; swords; a Company Roster and bullets taken from the field at Chickamauga and boxes of items including a regimental battle flag and one CSA belt buckle acquired from Vicksburg, Mississippi also a number of Confederate buttons found on the ground at Savannah, Georgia that the soldier found while with Sherman on his March. He bought so much he has not had time to look through all of the boxes yet. This from a family who had held onto their families history and then recently decided to sell it all.