Diary of Orrin Brown, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Sunday–Oct. 9th
Clear and pleasant and bids fair to be a warm day, went to the Burdick House and Norman and I with some of the other boys went up to the Unighted Brethren Church and heard a good sermon. Norman and I went and took a walk around town then went up to Camp Hooker about 1&1/4 miles from town went back to barracks in time for supper, wrote a letter to Ellen this evening. Went to bed again on my pine board.
The Kalamazoo Valley Museum has posted letters of several other Michigan soldiers from the Civil War. In the original material I have read over the years, it seems soldiers saved the more mundane details for journals and diaries, although in every war there is an imperative to censor mail. Different sources give different perspectives.
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