Alumni

Alumni Book Reviews

Affectionately Yours:
The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family

Edited by Barbara Butler Davis ’51/MLS ’01
Foreword by Alan T. Nolan
Indianapolis, IN: Indiana Historical Society, 2004
Review by Lawrence Lee Hewitt

Sixty-five letters dated between May 10, 1863 and January 26, 1865, comprise the core of Affectionately Yours: The Civil War Home-Front Letters of the Ovid Butler Family. Ovid Butler and his wife, Elizabeth Anne, wrote most of them to their son Scot while he served in the Union Army, but the collection also includes a few written to Scot by his siblings and two written by him to his future wife. The collection has been compiled by Barbara Butler Davis ’51/MLS ’01, Scot’s great-granddaughter.

A private who served mainly in Tennessee and Georgia, Scot enlisted in the 33rd Indiana Infantry Regiment at Lexington, Kentucky, his mother’s birthplace. Shortly after his arrival and with the backing of his colonel, Scot secured a transfer to the Signal Corps on December 1, 1862. He remained on detached duty with the Signal Corps until his discharge on February 1, 1865.

Ovid, a former lawyer, an abolitionist, and a Republican, was the founder of Butler University. The letters make clear that Elizabeth Anne did not share her husband’s abolitionist views. Even though her father had sold his slaves and moved to Indiana in 1830, Elizabeth Anne still had slave-owning relatives living in Lexington. Scot did not visit these kinsmen when he passed through town.

The Butler correspondence includes much about national and local politics and military affairs as well as family and neighborhood news. On November 6, 1864, Ovid wrote Scot, “The recent exposure of the so called Order of the Sons of Liberty and the pending Trials of some of the Members of the Order for Treason before a Military Commission here will I think contribute to swell the majority for Lincoln.” There is mention of weddings and births, but notices of deaths and illnesses occur more frequently. Though mainly concerned with her son’s safe return, Elizabeth Anne’s comments are remarkably insightful. On Confederate refugees fleeing north, she wrote, “I don’t know about letting the rebels send their poor do-less ones here for us to feed while they hold the husbands and fathers as soldiers fighting against us.…”

Supporting the letters are numerous family photographs, an extensive history of the family, and a detailed account of the Civil War’s impact on Indiana. Affectionately Yours sets the standard for such volumes.

Lawrence Lee Hewitt, formerly a professor of history, currently resides in Chicago. His publications include Port Hudson: Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi and Louisianians in the Civil War.

The Jews of Rhode Island

George M. Goodwin ’70 and Ellen Smith, eds.
Brandeis University Press and the University Press of New England, 2004
Review by Daniel Meyer

Visitors to the palatial seaside “summer cottages” of Newport, Rhode Island, are often drawn to a small, elegant Georgian building in the heart of the old town. Dedicated in 1763, the Touro house of worship is the oldest Jewish house of worship in the United States and the only synagogue surviving from colonial times. Now a National Historic Site, the Touro Synagogue is a treasured monument of American religious freedom. It is also a reminder of the lengthy history of the Jewish community of Rhode Island, which is explored in The Jews of Rhode Island , an illustrated anthology co-edited by cultural and art historian George M. Goodwin ’70.

Based on the work of contributors to Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes, a journal edited by Goodwin, The Jews of Rhode Island presents a lively and fascinating series of perspectives on Jewish society and culture over the past three and one-half centuries. Essays examine a wide variety of topics—the lives of 18th-century Jewish merchants in Newport; peddlers in South Providence; the United Brothers Synagogue of Bristol; Jewish industrialists and farmers; the study of the Hebrew language; summer vacations on Narragansett Bay in the 1920s; and the role of Jewish impresarios in developing the Newport Folk Festival.

The text is accompanied by more than 90 historical photographs. Here one sees a view of Jewish synagogues and sports; images of Jewish businesses and institutions; notable events and celebrations in the Jewish community; and a group portrait of three generations of the Morris Feinberg family celebrating Shevouth around the dinner table in 1943. The book’s detailed appendices will give it long-term usefulness for researchers. A timeline traces Jewish life in Rhode Island from the 1650s to the present, and four bibliographies suggest further sources on Rhode Island Jewish history and the demographic and statistical study of Jewish communities.

Daniel Meyer, associate curator of Special Collections and university archivist at the University of Chicago, is coauthor of Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest: Architecture and Landscape Design 1856–1940.