“EVERYTHING HAS PASSED ALONG JUST THE SAME DAY AFTER DAY” Pocket Diary Reveals the Monotony of Daily Life in the Army and the Navy BY JOHN M. COSKI
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hat I don’t understand is this entry about going ‘into Pennsacola [sic].’ What’s a guy in the 1st Maine Cavalry doing in Pensacola?” Senior Curator Robert Hancock and I were puzzling over the often faint and almost indecipherable penciled entries in a pocket diary that the Museum just received. The donor found the diary in a thrift store in Washington state and knew nothing about
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it beyond what is written on the first page: “Eben Andrews / 1st Maine Cavalry / Compeny [sic] C / Jan. 1st / 1864.” We discovered the answer to the riddle about a Maine cavalryman in Florida as we perused entries leading up to the May 1864 Overland Campaign. “[P]leasant all day Rebel Capt. Captured in Warrenton,” Andrews recorded on Saturday, April 23, 1864. “Application came back for me to go in the Navy[.]” Closer examination revealed that a month
earlier Andrews had “again sent my name for a transfer to the Navy.” Transferring between services was not uncommon in the Civil War, but letters and diaries by men who did so are rare. George S. Burkhardt received the Museum’s 2008-2009 Founders Award, given for excellence in editing of primary source documents, for his Doing Double Duty in the Civil War: The Letters of Sailor and Soldier Edward W. Bacon. Could Eben (Photo Above) Scan of Eben Andrews’ diary signature page. ACWM Collections
