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| Joined: | Sat Jan 27th, 2007 |
| Location: | Texas USA |
| Posts: | 831 |
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I can understand your frustration with the guy running the website who won't respond to your inquiries. In fact, he acts like he has the original diary in his possession.
Assuming that this person is not actually a relative of Thomas Simpson, one has to wonder how he came to possess the original, if it still exists, or even a copy. I would be curious to know what happened to the original since 1866, and when and how it escaped the custody of relatives of the author. (If it did).
The diary is apparently hundreds of pages. Its hard to believe that it hasn't been studied before, and this website owner is making the first copy in the 1990s. If he has the original, he had to have gotten it from someone. If he has a copy, then the copy had to come from someone else.
Since the guy who apparently knows the answers won't share the information, you might try historical organizations.
Illinois State Historical Society
Mercer County Illinois History (County groups are often great sources).
The 102nd Illinois was raised in Knoxville, IL. The Knox County Historical Society folks might know something.
Knox County, Illinois, USA
Sorry that I don't have the magic answer, but someone out there does. Good luck on your search.
It occurs to me as an afterthought that if you could get some representative of a historical society to make a request for information from the uncooperative website owner, that he might be more likely to respond to that than to an individual. A little subterfuge might be justified in this case.
Last edited on Tue Sep 14th, 2010 01:49 pm by Texas Defender