Civil War Letters of Elisha Randolph Robinson

This collection of letters is correspondence between soldier and sergeant E. Randolph Robinson and various members of his family during his nearly three years serving with the Union army in the U.S. Civil War. The bulk of his letters were sent from locations in Virginia, including Suffolk, Manassas Junction, Culpeper and Harpers Ferry. He was present at Appomattox when Lee surrendered and wrote of what he witnessed among the troops that day in the field. Most of the letters written to him were from family members in LaGrange and other locations in New York state and include several written prior to and after Robinson's Civil War service.

Elisha Randolph (Dott) Robinson was born on July 27, 1841, to Nathaniel C. and Roxa Mendel Robinson in the hamlet of LaGrange, Town of Covington, Wyoming County, New York. He attended school at the Middlebury Academy in Wyoming, N.Y. and taught school in Leicester, N.Y. before enlisting in Company D, 130th Regiment, New York State Volunteers in 1862. In mid-1863, he was transferred to the 1st NY Dragoons and served through the end of the war. He married Cornelia Maria Lane in 1875, with whom he had two sons, and died in Warsaw, N.Y. in 1924.

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