Voice from the Past: Dressed All the Wards with Festoons and Garlands

Happy Holidays! Today’s Voice from the Past is from the December 1861 diary of Eliza Newton Woolsey Howland.

We had taken some goodies and little traps with us for the men in the hospitals in Alexandria and were glad to find the nice arrangements that had already been made by Madame M. She had got Col. Davies to detail some of the 16th men to bring her Christmas greens, and had dressed all the wards with festoons and garlands, little flags, mottoes, etc., besides arranging for a grand Christmas dinner for her “boys.”

Source: Eliza Newton Woolsey Howland, “Diary of Eliza Newton Woolsey Howland, December, 1861,” in Letters of a Family during the War for the Union 1861-1865, vol. 1., edited by Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Woolsey Howland (Privately published, 1899).

Image Credit: Library of Congress.

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