Chambersburg residents Rachel and Samuel Cormany’s diaries provide a microcosm of life in south-central Pennsylvania throughout the American Civil War, both on the home front and on the conflict’s battlefields.

Join Codie Eash as he examines their backgrounds in Canada, Ohio, and Franklin County; their lives before, during, and after the Gettysburg Campaign; and how the war years disrupted their relationship, their livelihood, and their family for decades to come. Also explore the collection of which these letters are part—Edward Ayers’s Valley of the Shadow Project—an immense and extraordinary online primary source repository that provides understanding for military and civilian life in the Great Valley of Pennsylvania and Virginia, from Antebellum through Reconstruction.

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Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center

Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center