{"id":23874,"date":"2017-02-28T06:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=23874"},"modified":"2017-02-27T22:38:12","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T04:38:12","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-history-professor-minoa-uffelman-part-of-team-to-restore-civil-war-era-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2017\/02\/28\/austin-peay-state-university-history-professor-minoa-uffelman-part-of-team-to-restore-civil-war-era-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University history professor Minoa Uffelman part of team to restore Civil War-era diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Military conflicts are not fought in isolation, and the American Civil War was no different. While civilians like Serepta Jordan never lifted a musket, Jordan and millions like her felt its impact, and it is precisely that neglected perspective that made the discovery of her diary by area historians so significant.<\/p>\n

A working-class woman living in Clarksville during the war, Jordan was not a name remembered by history.<\/p>\n

\"Minoa<\/a>

Minoa Uffelman holding the $3,000 Archive Development Grant check from the State of Tennessee.<\/p><\/div>\n

But although she never led soldiers into battle, she nonetheless faithfully recorded the war\u2019s impact on the population of Clarksville in both major and minor ways through her daily writings from 1857 until 1864.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Serepta Jordan diary, housed at the Clarksville Customs House, is one of the most important historical documents in Tennessee,\u201d said Minoa Uffelman, associate professor of history at APSU. \u201cThe diary is a priceless repository of daily life in Clarksville in the years leading to disunion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s writings are contained in a repurposed leather-bound ledger, but time has not been kind to her writings. Rediscovered in an outhouse in the 1980s and entrusted to the Customs House Museum shortly after, the fragile memoir was in desperate need of repair before Uffelman and a group of historians launched an effort to restore and publish Jordan\u2019s detail of a pivotal time in American \u2014 and Clarksville \u2014 history.<\/p>\n

\u201cI, along with the editors of the Nannie Haskins Williams diary, Ellen Kanervo, Phyllis Smith and Eleanor Williams, are currently editing the diary for publication with University of Tennessee Press,\u201d Uffelman said. \u201cBecause of the fragility of the diary, we even have to use photos of the pages to check our transcription.\u201d<\/p>\n

The restoration efforts recently received a major boost when Kali Mason, curator of collections at the Customs House Museum, obtained a $3,000 Archive Development Grant from the state of Tennessee. Delivered by Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, the grant will be used to continue the group\u2019s preservation efforts.<\/p>\n

During a small event to celebrate the grant offering, Hargett, Clarksville Mayor Kim McMillan and Millie Armstrong, Jordan\u2019s great-great-great-granddaughter, received an opportunity to observe the diary and discuss the work being done to preserve it for future generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pages (of the diary) are filled with (Jordan\u2019s) observations, feelings and experiences from the Civil War era in Clarksville,\u201d Uffelman said. \u201cSerepta describes military preparations as the community is raising units and women sew uniforms and other provisions for soldiers. As a working-class woman with no income or connections we gain insights into her struggles to survive as her one family member dies and leaves her alone in a world with no options for female careers. <\/p>\n

\u201cSerepta entries show the community life of New Providence, describing a rich network of friends, church life and lectures,\u201d Uffelman said. \u201cAlong with the ordinary, she describes witnessing a lynching, a steamboat accident and the horrors of the Civil War.\u201d<\/p>\n

The diary project is the second for the team, who earlier edited a local work, \u201cThe Diary of Nannie Haskins Willians, A Southern Woman’s Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863-1890,\u201d which was published in 2014 by the University of Tennessee Press. Upon completion of their transcription efforts, Uffelman said Jordan\u2019s diary will also be published in a format that can be easily read and shared.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the diary is published, we hope there will be new interest in the original and scholars may want to use it,\u201d Uffelman said. \u201cIn its current condition, that is virtually impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on Austin Peay\u2019s Department of History and Philosophy, visit www.apsu.edu\/history<\/a>. For more information on the Clarksville Customs House Museum, visit www.customshousemuseum.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Military conflicts are not fought in isolation, and the American Civil War was no different. While civilians like Serepta Jordan never lifted a musket, Jordan and millions like her felt its impact, and it is precisely that neglected perspective that made the discovery of her diary by area historians so significant. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,20650,262,1485,1759,825,1050,4126,1904,3338,13723,27997,693,29730,4472,5852,6236,12469,29729,1758,12819,23784,2557,20938],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-6d4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23875,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23874\/revisions\/23875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}