[A cannon stands where Pelsor’s regiment was placed at the siege of Vicksburg. Picture courtesy of Jim Varner, a descendant of Miriam Pelsor, who took the photo on a visit to the battlefield.]
A few weeks back, I was wondering how I could self-publish the Pelsor Letters, making the book look elegant without having to learn a whole new software system. Luckily, I discovered bookdesigntemplates.com. They have a variety of templates that work with different word processors, including Microsoft Word, which I use. After watching an hour-long video, I bought one of their templates, and began applying the styles to each chapter. Here’s a sample chapter start page:
I was really pleased with the results. Then I experimented with publishing the letter content; I wanted to publish as many of the letters as possible in two columns to save space, but yet make the text large enough to be readable. At first I was using a book size of 6″ x 9″ (the most popular non-fiction book format), but because I needed a larger font size I changed to a 7″ x 10″ template. Here’s a two-column example of one of the letters:
I finished transcribing Pelsor’s Diary and have incorporated his entries into chapters three and four. As of this date I’m hoping to finish chapters two through eight – those containing the actual letters – by the end of May. Currently, I’m writing the narration at the beginning of Chapter 6: “Vicksburg Campaign:”
- Introduction
- Jul 1861 – Nov 1861 – Missouri Bound (1-17)
- Nov 1861 – Apr 1862 – Winter Camp to Pea Ridge (18-43)
- Apr 1862 – Nov 1862 – Arkansas Journey, Then Home (44-61)
- Nov 1862 – Mar 1863 – Missouri Revisited (62-78)
- Mar 1863 – Aug 1863 – Vicksburg Campaign (79-92)
- Aug 1863 – Jun 1864 – Texas Gulf Duty, Then Home Again (93-113)
- Jul 1864 – Dec 1864 – Shenandoah Finale (114-133)
- Postscript
- Chronology
- Index of People
In June, I will write the Introduction and Postscript, and format the last two chapters, whose data I have been accumulating as I add to each chapter. In addition, I have been drawing maps which will be on the facing page to chapters 2 through 8. I need to format them to fit properly on the page.
Even with only chapters 2 through 6 completed, I currently have about 180 pages, so I expect the whole book to be over 300.
Descendancy Research
In my last post I mentioned finding living descendants to locate pictures mentioned in the letters. For example, consider this quote from Pelsor’s letter of March 18, 1862:
It must have been great for Pelsor to see a picture of his baby son Sergeant, born on January 5, 1862. Is it possible that some descendant of Olive or Sergeant has this picture? I’ve been keeping track of other pictures mentioned in the letters whose existence we don’t know about. The way to find living descendants is described beautifully in a YouTube video by Crista Cowan for Ancestry: “Descendancy Research.”
In my previous post about the letters, I showed the first page of a notebook I started that lists the twelve children and stepchildren of Peter Pelsor, and I decided to start with my great-grandmother Indiana Pelsor (code “IP”), who was the first of the six children they had together (having started out with a blended family of three each with their previous spouses who died). So that my starting page for Indiana, “IP-1,” lists the offspring of her only marriage, to Omer Alley:
The next step in a descendancy project is to begin from the oldest child, working down until the succession comes to an end, or living descendants are found. The first one to have descendants is Alsie Alley (she happens to be my grandmother), and her page starts on “IP-2,” the next one for Nira Alley is “IP-3,” etc. The youngest child, Agnes F. Alley, has two pages, “IP-5” and “IP-6” reserved for her descendants. It is one of Agnes’s descendants that has the Civil War letters, because her mother and father, Omer Alley and Indiana Pelsor, came from Indiana to stay with her in Portland, Oregon, where Indiana (who had the letters) died in 1922.