1862: Contoocook‘s Burleigh K. Jones writes to his brother following the Battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks, VA):

Hopk-JonesBK-1862-06-13-FairOaks-01-www.MarekBennett.com Hopk-JonesBK-1862-06-13-FairOaks-02-www.MarekBennett.com Hopk-JonesBK-1862-06-13-FairOaks-03-www.MarekBennett.com Hopk-JonesBK-1862-06-13-FairOaks-04-www.MarekBennett.com Hopk-JonesBK-1862-06-13-FairOaks-05-www.MarekBennett.com

NEXT: Bean slops & rainy pickets >>

Burleigh K. Jones was always looking for a new way to make a little extra money; in the years leading up to the war, he writes letter after letter to his brother hatching schemes to peddle buttons, oil blacking, “match lighters”, and other paraphernalia.  The fact that he’s in the midst of combat with the 2nd NH deep in rebel territory does nothing to suppress his entrepreneurial spirit!

Some references & sources for the above panels:

13 June 1862


2 responses to “Dear Brother (Jones, June 13th 1862)”

  1. I am Pedling Buttons (B K Jones, March 6th 1858) (Guest Post) | Live Free and Draw by Marek Bennett Avatar

    […] for novel ways to make a living… Even when he joins the 2nd NH in 1861, he tries his hand at “pedling” pipes and barbering.  His ideas often outpace his success; these are the same buttons he asked his […]

  2. Thanksgiving Letter (B K Jones, Dec 2d 1860, #2) (Guest Post) | Live Free and Draw by Marek Bennett Avatar

    […] Burleigh & Luther enlist the following year, they’ll join the 2nd NH Company B, the sharpshooters […]

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