Sheridan resident transcribes ancestor’s Civil War diaries

SHERIDAN — On Jan. 16, 1865, John Prentice, a soldier in the Union Army in the American Civil War, participated in a battalion drill in Savannah, Georgia. In the three years prior, he’d witnessed and fought in what would become historic battles, traded prisoners with the Confederate army and marched hundreds of miles across the country.

That night, he sat down and recorded his thoughts in his diary, as he did nearly every night.

“One by one, (our) number grows less, and each place is filled by new men. As I look through the Co. (and) I see but few that started out with me, I learn a lesson from this which I never can forget,” Prentice wrote.

In the ensuing years, Prentice’s diaries would travel from the battlefield to Prentice’s home in Pawpaw, Illinois, and finally to his descendant Doyle Fritz in Sheridan.

Two years ago, Fritz found his great-grandfather’s diaries on a bookshelf in his aunt’s house in Sturgis, South Dakota. Interested in his ancestor’s story, he began working to transcribe them.

After around six months of research, traveling and detailed transcription, Fritz completely transcribed the collection of diaries.

Before finding the diaries, Fritz knew nothing about his ancestor’s experience in the war.

“I spent my summers on my grandpa’s farm in South Dakota — he’s the son of this man (Prentice), and I never knew anything about it,” Fritz said. “I could’ve asked him all sorts of questions.”

During the process, Fritz learned three more diaries were in Pawpaw, Illinois, in the house that Prentice built, which is still owned by the family.

Fritz, along with other members of his family, traveled to Pawpaw and met up with their family to obtain the diaries. Many of the family members he met he didn’t know well, and he got to know them better during the research process.

“It was fun to see his house, visit there, see all these cousins,” Fritz said. “I had met one a couple times over the years and got to know him.”

To transcribe the diary, which is written in cursive on stained and sometimes faded pages, Fritz scanned the pages onto his computer, where he used Photoshop to enhance the text. He’d previously taken a Sheridan College class on Photoshop use. Despite this, a few parts of the text are still illegible or unreadable because of damage.

Fritz said it surprised him these diaries survived at all because of the hardship of war and the passing of centuries.

Prentice traveled with Company A, 57th Illinois Infantry Volunteers from Mendota through major battles and theaters of the war. He fought in the Battle of Shiloh, among others, and spent a lot of time marching hundreds of miles or on picket duty.

Many of his entries are records of the day’s happenings, with notes on times and location.

For example on April 29, 1863, Prentice wrote: “Town Creek. The enemy are in sight this morning. We started back this morning and have passed through Tuscumbia at 2:30 p.m. and are camped tonight near Little Bear Creek. The cavalry have burnt nearly all the buildings on the road.”

Prentice often notes when he wrote to family members, the amount of rations he had or payments he made. Fritz said this perspective was unique, as many war texts are from the point of view of officers or historians aware of larger troop movements.

“These guys on the infantry level knew nothing about big plans, what was going on,” Fritz said. “Many times, you’d see, they were told to march with three days rations, that’s all they were told.”

In his diaries, Prentice notes where he marches and camps, but rarely any notes on the larger war.

Fritz said one challenge with this was misinformation, as soldiers rarely had reliable sources of news on the state of the war. When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, April 14, 1865, Prentice did not hear the news until three days later, and was told the wrong assassination date.

“We learn through what is supposed to be a reliable source that the President of the U.S. was killed by an assassin on the night of the 11th,” Prentice wrote on April 17, 1865.

Two days later, the news was contradicted by another source, and Prentice did not find out for sure that Lincoln had died until April 20, what he called a “long, lonesome day.”

To make up for this lack of information about larger movements, Fritz included research on battles and movements in the transcription along with Google Maps images showing the routes that Prentice marched down.

Prentice’s thoroughness in his diary-writing has been useful for other researchers, to whom Fritz has sent the transcripts at their request.

Prentice took note of every time he wrote or received letters, which received a mention in “Delivered Under Fire: Absalom Markland and Freedom’s Mail” by Candice Shy Hooper, a history of the post during the Civil War. Prentice also recorded the types of apples he ate, which an apple aficionado in Tennessee compared to the apples currently available in the state.

In the future, Fritz hopes to find and transcribe the letters Prentice sent. To do this, he is trying to connect with more of Prentice’s descendants.