Georgia Library Quarterly Volume 54 Article 17 Issue 2 Spring 2017
4-1-2017 Book Review - Between the Wedding & the War: The ulB loch/Roosevelt Letters 1854-1860 Deborah Prosser [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Prosser, Deborah (2017) "Book Review - Between the Wedding & the War: The ulB loch/Roosevelt Letters 1854-1860," Georgia Library Quarterly: Vol. 54 : Iss. 2 , Article 17. Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/glq/vol54/iss2/17
This Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Georgia Library Quarterly by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Prosser: Book Review - Between the Wedding & the War
Between the Wedding & the War: The myriad aspects of daily life, business, Bulloch/Roosevelt Letters 1854–1860 by economics, and politics. The majority of the Gwendolyn I. Koehler and Connie M. original letters are in the Theodore Roosevelt Huddleston (Friends of Bulloch, Inc., 2016: ISBN Collection at Harvard University’s Houghton 978-0-6927-5963-9, $16.99) Library. Bulloch Hall staff, volunteers, and university interns transcribed, researched, and Between the Wedding and the War is the checked each letter for accuracy. The letters are second in a three-volume series of compilations presented chronologically across nine chapters of Bulloch and Roosevelt family letters. The first punctuated by photographs, black and white volume, Mittie & Thee: An 1853 Roosevelt illustrations, and family trees. The volume is Romance, chronicles the indexed, and a list of persons courtship and marriage of references the many Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and individuals mentioned Martha “Mittie” Bulloch, throughout the letters. parents of President Theodore Roosevelt. A third volume of One of the book’s greatest letters currently in production strengths is the authors’ spans the experiences of the attentiveness to grounding the entwined Bulloch and reader in the personal and Roosevelt families during the historical contexts of the Civil War years. Bulloch Hall is letters. The preface provides a an 1839 Greek Revival house succinct overview of the in Roswell, Georgia, that now history of Bulloch Hall and the operates as an historic house transcription process. Each museum and was Mittie’s chapter begins with a short childhood home. essay covering national and world events during the year Mittie Roosevelt moved to in which the subsequent New York after her marriage, letters were written. and her half-sister, Susan West, lived in Philadelphia Throughout the book, the after her own marriage. Their mother, the elder letters are interspersed with prose that further Martha and family matriarch, followed her illuminates the individuals, relationships, and daughters north from Georgia with her events mentioned. For example, when remaining unwed children. The letters of this Theodore Roosevelt Sr. (Thee) wrote of being period, many of which are extraordinarily stranded in New Orleans in January of 1856 detailed and intimate, shed new light on the with “rivers blocked up with ice,” Koehler and early history of an American political dynasty Huddleston reference the winter of 1856–1857 with Northern and Southern roots in the as one of the coldest in recorded US history to tumultuous years leading up to war. date. On October 28, 1858, Martha Bulloch wrote that her daughter, Mittie, “has a fine The book contains meticulous transcriptions of little son” after a “great trial”. The authors nearly one hundred family letters that recount
Published by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University, 2017 1 Georgia Library Quarterly, Vol. 54, Iss. 2 [2017], Art. 17
underscore that the new baby was the future authors deftly place the intimate family President Roosevelt. portraits against the backdrop of pre-Civil War social history. The three volumes of the Bulloch The preface to this second volume of Bulloch- Letters (one forthcoming) are highly Roosevelt correspondence asserts that the recommended for libraries, museums, historic letters open a singular window into the houses, and other collections with a focus on personal lives of leading Northern and Southern presidential, Southern, and pre-Civil War families at a “pivotal” moment in history. When histories. reading the letters in their entirety, one discovers that they are often richly detailed, Deborah Prosser is Dean of Libraries at humorous, wrenching, and poignant. The University of North Georgia
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