The Gerould Family of New Hampshire in the Civil War: Two Diaries and a Memoir

When family history meets history…This chapbook is a collection of eyewitness historical documents from the American Civil War handed down through descendants of the Gerould family.

Two transcribed pocket diaries for the year 1864 describe the day-by-day tribulations of young Union navy surgeon Dr. Martin Gerould, assigned to the ill-fated ironclad Eastport in the Red River Campaign; and his aging mother Cynthia Locke Gerould, the wife of a clergyman, back home in New Hampshire.

The increasingly gripping cross-illumination of the paired accounts is further rounded out by the later-written memoir of Martin's eldest brother Reverend (soon to be Private) Samuel L. Gerould, detailing his experiences in the Fourteenth New Hampshire Volunteers: three voices from the past speaking directly, in their own words.

Added for this second edition is the autobiography of paterfamilas Moses Gerould describing his career as a minister, transcribed by his wife Cynthia.