About

What’s with the misspellings and capitalization?

I try to transcribe everything exactly as it is on the page. That means preserving the original spellings and erratic capitalizations of the 19th century. In letters posted from February 2012 onward, there should be large enough scans that you can click on them to read them yourself. I do my best but it is sometimes a judgment call where a mark is a period or a comma, for example. I try to make sure that the misspellings are accurate transcriptions rather than typos on my part, but if you find something that isn’t supported by the text itself, do let me know.

Where is the collection?

The collection was in the possession of Robert Avis, D.P. Grier’s great-grandson, until 2012, when he donated it to the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis, MO. It now lives very happily in their temperature-controlled archives. If you want to see it in person, you can visit the museum’s Library and Research Center.

Who writes this blog?

I’m D.P. Grier’s great-great-great-granddaughter. I created General Grier’s Civil War with the support of the MO History Museum because we think the Grier collection is so outstanding in what it can tell us about the Civil War, living in Peoria and St. Louis in the second half of the 19th century, and the emotional life and relationships of a family, that it deserves to be available to a wider audience.

Feel free to contact me!