Last winter, Shevonne Travers and Alice Evans stated making trips to the Vermont Historical Society in Barre, where letters from the American Civil War-era are archived.
They sourced hundreds of pages of handwritten letters sent between soldiers and their family members in The Valley
The result is an original screenplay written by Travers and Evans called “Keep Up the Good Courage,” to be staged at the Valley Players Theater on Friday, November 8, at 7 p.m. An additional showing will be held on Sunday, November 10, at 2 p.m.
The play is hosted by Joslin Memorial Library, where Travers is the program coordinator. Evans, whose historical text “Our Suffering Brave: Waitsfield Boys and Men in the Civil War” was published last year, primarily served as a historical consultant for the production.
The play itself contains the role of a historian, two Waitsfield men stationed in Virginia in 1962-63 and several of their family members.
Travers and Evans worked with research librarians at the Vermont Historical Society to locate letters sent to and from local people, coming upon over 300 pages of handwritten documents to devour.
Evans recalled used a magnifying glass, squinting through tiny font for hundreds of hours. “But I had a lot of experience reading handwritten Civil War material,” she said, referring to the three decades she spent inquiring into Civil War-era histories – even making trips to historical battlefields across the United States and joining a host of study groups.
While developing the screenplay, Travers and Evans decided to draw on letters tied to just two Waitsfield men based in Virginia with Vermont’s 13th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. One of those men, Richard Dutton Silsby, wrote daily letters to his wife Marinda, who was caring for their three children while keeping the family’s Moretown farm afloat for nine months.
Evans said the content of the letters that she and Travers read focused on the details of daily life – the men describing short trips they took to visit the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the White House in Washington, DC, and asking their wives about how the family farm was faring. “It was about, how many chickens and turkeys were there? Were they laying eggs? Did she get a good price for the eggs and butter?” Evans recalled.
Travers said that one of the soldiers asked his wife to mail him fishing tackle and $1 to buy apples.
“The emotion [in the letters] is quite subdued,” Evans said. “It’s obvious there was a lot of concern, but being in the Victorian era, you kind of expect that not to emerge. That was just the way of living – to be very subdued in their communications.”
“Keep Up the Good Courage” is based on these archived communications, as well as an 1864 memoir by Edwin F. Palmer, who kept a diary while enlisted.
Farm chores aside, the play also takes up the impact epidemic disease for both soldiers and local families. Evans found that among 30 local men stationed in other states for the war, four had died of disease and three were hospitalized by 1863 – about two years after the war began.
Far more men died of epidemic disease than from battleground injuries in the Civil War, Evans said she learned in her research over the years.
Bobbi Rood serves as co-director and stage manager of the production, while also helping to edit the script. Jane Cunningham and Debbie Wilson of the Songbird Project will perform songs that were popular among Vermont soldiers in their camps and on long marches, with drummers from the Civil War-era reenactment group the Vermont Hemlocks.
Admission is free and donations are welcome at the door.
BOX and PHOTO to run with this story pic on page 3 for songbird
Cutline: Debbie Wilson and Jane Cunningham
The Songbird Project and the Civil War
Who remembers the Civil War Song, Battle Hymn of the Republic? Think . .”Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. .” What many probably don’t know is that this song has a really interesting history.
It started when Union civil war soldiers used the tune from an old call-and-response hymn (or British shanty, or Swedish drinking song, depending on what expert article oneread) to create a coarse and irreverent song about the Civil War abolitionist John Brown. The Commonwealth of Virginia had captured, tried and executed Brown, a prominent leader in the American abolitionist movement, for his role in a raid and a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in 1859. The Civil War soldiers’ new words declared that John Brown’s body was “mouldering in the grave,” but his soul went marching on.
“John Brown’s Body” became immensely popular among the ranks. Not everyone was happy about this. According to George Kimball in “Origin of the John Brown Song,” New England Magazine Series 1 (1890), President Abraham Lincoln asked his friend Julia Ward Howe to “write some good words for that stirring tune.” Howe did just that, penning the lyrics now sung in the Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Want to hear both versions of this interesting song and learn how Valley ancestors experienced the Civil War? You can! The Joslin Memorial Library is presenting “Keep Up the Courage,” an original play featuring civil war correspondence between Waitsfield soldiers and their families at home. In the play, The Songbird Project, along with the cast, will perform “John Brown’s Body” and a number of other Civil War songs this weekend when The Valley Players Theater hosts Keep Up The Good Courage.
