Browse Exhibits (2 total)

For the last decade of my retirement years I have been afforded access to Civil War letters and diaries that were in private collections—some still there, and some that were slated for sale on eBay or other auction sites. In exchange for a transcription and my research, the owners of these documents gave me permission to publish the transcripts and scans of the original documents on one of my Spared & Shared websites. 

I believe it’s safe to say that none of the thousands of letters appearing in the Spared & Shared archive have ever been previously transcribed or published before. At least I have made it my policy not to duplicate the work of others. I should also note that one of my goals has been to make the content of these letters/diaries available to historians and educators for public use without constraints, on free and publicly available websites. As one might well imagine, the frequent feedback from those who have benefited from the posted material has more than rewarded me for the effort.

But this is not a process I can continue forever and my colleagues have suggested that this compilation of primary material—particularly the thousands of Civil War letters—needs a permanent home where it can be accessed long after I’m gone and my websites flicker away into the ether. That’s why I’m delighted (and relieved) to pass this baton on to Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute In this age, I suppose the physical location of digitized ephemera doesn’t matter much, but for me, I can’t imagine a better place to house what may be the largest single collection of digitized Civil War letters than in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley at Winchester, Virginia. It is my hope that the letters can continue to be made publically available through their digital library and even enhanced by tagging so that transcriptions are more easily searched.

– William J. Griffing, Spared & Shared