Have I ever found an enlistment photo of any member of Company F of the Pa. 133rd? Speakman, Allabach. No one else. Oh, a private, John Perrin. A private! Sgt. Bracken was in D.C. with his partying compatriots. There's a photo of them!
Have I ever found a letter by Sgt. Bracken, or one mentioning him? Only in Chaplain Hartsock's book where his name is misspelled "Bracker." Didn't he get diarrhea "which hit the Pa. 133rd particularly hard"? Not a mention in the Sanitary Commission reports. What, was he immune to partying and diarrhea?
A correspondent some years ago suggested that the boys of Company F probably didn't write. At all? I think that unlikely to impossible. Bell Wiley gathered hundreds of letters, some barely intelligible, from less educated Confederate soldiers. Surely Nathan Bracken could write "as well." He had a wife! He was away from home for the first time! He never wrote to her or she to him from August 15-December 13? Well, that's not very long and for a letter to have survived...Fine, what about a photo? NOTHING. See, I'm getting myself worked up again. If I hadn't checked gmail...I had given up on this. It really frustrates me.
Have I ever found a letter by Sgt. Bracken, or one mentioning him? Only in Chaplain Hartsock's book where his name is misspelled "Bracker." Didn't he get diarrhea "which hit the Pa. 133rd particularly hard"? Not a mention in the Sanitary Commission reports. What, was he immune to partying and diarrhea?
A correspondent some years ago suggested that the boys of Company F probably didn't write. At all? I think that unlikely to impossible. Bell Wiley gathered hundreds of letters, some barely intelligible, from less educated Confederate soldiers. Surely Nathan Bracken could write "as well." He had a wife! He was away from home for the first time! He never wrote to her or she to him from August 15-December 13? Well, that's not very long and for a letter to have survived...Fine, what about a photo? NOTHING. See, I'm getting myself worked up again. If I hadn't checked gmail...I had given up on this. It really frustrates me.
