Paul W. Bean, UMaine Class of '35, spent many years collecting and transcribing materials related to the Civil War, a collection that grew to nearly 700 books, maps, diaries and letters donated to the University of Maine in 1972.
As a part of an internship program, Edward Andrew Kobylarz, a Graduate Student in History at the University of Maine, selected materials to be included in this digital collection, digitized, and transcribed them. A wide variety of themes emerged during that process, including Civil War era perspectives on the environment, politics and political movements, views from the home front in Maine, and post-war reflections in documents written many years after the war. Andrew's introduction to the digital collection and the methods used during the project have been included within a document below.
For more information about the Paul W. Bean Civil War collection, please contact the University of Maine Special Collections Department, Raymond H. Fogler Library, at 207.586.1686 or um.library.spc @ maine.edu. An inventory of the complete collection can also be found online at http://www.library.umaine.edu/speccoll/FindingAids/Bean.htm.
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Letter from W.B. Rice to Mrs. Harriet L. Rand, July 31, 1861
Harriet L. Rand
Letter from W.B. Rice to his sister Louisa, July 31, 1861. In it he tells her of his life in the army and the conditions they faced since the outbreak of the war, though the reality of the situation and the brutality of the battlefield caused him enough disturbance to not include any information about his experiences at Bull Run.
Taken from the Paul W. Bean Collection, Box no. 279, f.44