Civil War Hijinks at The Danbury Museum & Historical Society

Join us at The Danbury Museum on Saturday, June 6th at 2:00 p.m. and step back in time and experience the Civil War firsthand through Judy Cook’s performance of “Civil War Hijinks.”

The renowned performer will entertain with Civil War era songs, projected images, and excerpts from her book A QUIET CORNER OF THE WAR: The Civil War Letters of Gilbert and Esther Claflin, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, 1862-1863. A Q&A and an opportunity to purchase her book will follow the presentation.

In 2002, Judy Cook discovered a packet of letters written by her great-great-grandparents, Gilbert and Esther Claflin, during the American Civil War. An unexpected bounty, these letters from 1862–63 offer visceral witness to the war, recounting the trials of a family separated. Gilbert, an articulate and cheerful forty-year-old farmer, was drafted into the Union Army and served in the Thirty-Fourth Wisconsin Infantry garrisoned in western Kentucky along the Mississippi. Esther had married Gilbert when she was fifteen; now a woman with two teenage sons, she ran the family farm near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in Gilbert’s absence.

In his letters, Gilbert writes about food, hygiene, rampant desertions by drafted men, rebel guerrilla raids, and pastimes in the daily life of a soldier. His comments on interactions with Confederate prisoners and ex-slaves before and after the Emancipation Proclamation reveal his personal views on monumental events. Esther shares in her letters the challenges of maintaining the farm, accounts of their boys Elton and Price, concerns about finances and health, and news of their community, illuminating aspects of the wartime North often overlooked in Civil War histories.

Suggested donation: $5.00