The letters of Saratoga County‘s Alonzo Bump, compiled in part from the collection of the History Center at Brookside Museum in Ballston Spa, provide an account of the experience of an upstate New Yorker who left home to fight for the Union during the American Civil War.

Alonzo D. Bump lived in the thriving cotton mill community at Victory, the home of the Saratoga Victory Manufacturing Company where he was employed as a weaver. With the desire to, “go down to see the world,” Alonzo left behind his wife Mary and his three-year-old daughter Mattie. Private Bump’s letters were primarily written to Mary, though a few were directed to his mother, mother-in-law, and his two sisters-in-law. [Read more…] about The Civil War Letters of Alonzo Bump of Saratoga County