Thanks to Paul Keroack and the Norwalk History Room at the Norwalk Public Library, 17thcvi.org is able to add a variety of letters written home by Floyd T. Ruscoe of Company H for our readers. Ruscoe, originally from Lewisboro, NY, enlisted in Company H out of New Canaan at the age of 19 and served throughout the war. A big thank you to Paul for bringing these to light and taking the time to transcribe them for the site!
As most visitors know, this site is a compilation blog. Simply put, this site has existed since 1997 (wow) to locate information on the 17th CVI and put it here, in one place, where anyone interested (and willing to spend some time with it) can find it. How effective it may be depends a great deal upon the friends of the site who find, transcribe, scan and otherwise provide the material you see here.
That said, I’m always looking to add more! I still have dozens of letters in my own collection that need to be transcribed and added (19th century handwriting runs the gamut from fancy to look at and easy to read to practically indecipherable – such as Colonel Noble’s letters!).
I really enjoy visiting this site and finding the nuggets of history that continues to surface 150 years after the War. Thank you for the work you put into this site, I for one, deeply appreciate your efforts completely understanding the challenges of trying to understand/decipher 19th century handwriting.
Mike – thanks for the nice words. We’ll keep working to find those letters and whatnot that have been hidden for so long. I’d be remiss if I forgot to thank all those who have also worked on transcribing all those old letters as well!