DECEMBER 1864 CIVIL WAR LETTER FROM LEBANON, PA RESIDENT JACOB FORNEY KREPS TO SOLDIER SON SERVING IN 67TH REGT. USCT

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Item Code: 945-505

FROM J.F. KREPS TO SON LIEUT. ADAM KREPS, CO. “A”, 67TH REGT. U.S.C.T., serving in Louisiana. Dated “West Newton, Dec. 26th, 1864.” 4 pp. in ink on unlined paper, 8 x 9.75.” Exhibits fold-marks and slight soiling and foxing. Else VG and entirely legible. In protective sleeve. Accompanied by documentation.

In this letter Kreps writes about Sherman’s and Thomas’s successes at Savannah and Nashville, before passing on to news of sons Dempsey, Willie and Francis. Excerpts as follow:

We have had no word from Dempsey and Willie since the battles with Hood at Nashville…We feel considerable uneasiness about them…The First Division of the Division in which the 77th [Dempsey’s regiment] had a hard fight and lost a great many men…

We have not received a letter from Francis but had word by a letter from Capt. Durham dated Columbia, Dec. 10, stating that Francis had made his escaped six weeks previous…and having had no real intelligence we feel greatly troubled about him…All is uncertainty….He may be re-taken or he may be wandering about the enemy’s lines suffering privations of hunger and cold. And perhaps worse than all this, but we have tried to commit to the hands of our heavenly father…”

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Born in 1806 in Lebanon, PA, J.F. Kreps established himself in Greencastle as an enterprising farmer and businessman, moving to West Newton/ Rostraver Township. An ardent Union patriot, Kreps raised troops and money, and served as a civilian Pennsylvania regimental commissioner, spending two months in that capacity visiting PA regiments serving with Gen. Rosecrans’ army at Stones River, TN, in late spring/early summer 1863; also visiting PA Army of the Potomac units in 1864.

He also contributed five sons to the Union army—John, Francis, Adam, William and David Dempsey (with John, Francis and Adam serving as officers), in five different regiments, all of whom would survive, though son John would be severely wounded at Liberty Gap, TN, and son Frank, captured at Chickamauga, would spend 14 months in various Confederate prisons before making an heroic and hair-raising escape from Columbia, S.C., in 1864.

The bulk of the letters in this first family grouping (27 letters dating from August 7, 1861 to July 1864) are from J.F. Kreps to son Adam (15th PA Cavalry, 67th Regt. U.S.C.T., 92nd Regt. U.S.C.T. Also letters to son Frank (77th PA Infy) and son George, and six to wife Eliza, most of which were written during J.F. Kreps tour of General Rosecrans’ army. Subsequent groups contain letters home from sons Adam, William, John and David Dempsey. Taken as a whole, the Kreps letters present a valuable and fascinating picture of the coming and goings of an American family at war.   [JP]

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