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Jennie B
When I volunteered to write a diary for GFHC, I had planned on writing about
family letters I have, that were written during the Civil War. They were written between my great great grandma Jennie B and her beau, later her husband Ira B Conine he served in the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Company G. They were neighbors, as their parents farms were around the corner from each other. Since its women’s history month, I will just write about Jennie B and what I learned about her from the letters.
Her given name is Minerva Jane Bysel, born in Salt Creek Township, Holmes County, Ohio on April 1, 1841. Her father was Philip Bysel, born in PA and her mother is Mary Margaret Cary, born in OH. She had a brother George Bysel, who served in the Civil War. But Minerva Jane, was known as Jennie B by those closest to her.
In 1977 someone I worked with, set the fire in me, to start doing family research, and my Aunt told me about the letters. These letters, my Aunt had brought back to Florida from Ohio, in 1959, they had been kept in Jennie B's bureau, which had been stored in my grandparents attic. There are about 60 of them. They are really the center of all of my genealogy research. They are very difficult to read, due to the fancy handwriting of the day, and the fact that paper was scare and not very large in size, during the War, they had to use every inch of their paper.
Also, having spent over 100 years folded up in their envelopes, it has left them very fragile not to mention the brown spots and missing pieces. Reading them is like learning to read in another language. 
It takes a long time to decipher what the fancy letters with curly-q's are and learn the spellings of words from yesteryear.
In 1998 I received a e-mail from a cousin, asking me, "did I know anything about the Conine papers" at The Center for Archival Collections for Northwest Ohio housed at Bowling Green State University.
"No, I know nothing about them I replied".
But thanks to the google of the day, I soon had some answers.
Seems some other relative at some point had taken another 80 of those Civil War letters. Whom it was we have never been able to ascertain.
They were bought by the University from dealer in Valley Stream,NY in 1992..
The mystery as to how they ended up in Valley Stream NY, from Ohio, I don’t think will be solved in this life.
I contacted the department, and told them of my 60 letters. That summer I took my letters there and allowed them to copy my letters I still have the original's and I love to read them, something about holding paper that my gg grandparent wrote on, put their thoughts and feeling in, that they touched, somehow connects me to them. The silent messenger of their day was their pen, today its the keyboard. In return, the university copied all of their letters for me, on archival paper, enlarging them so they are somewhat easier to read. But reading the copies, is not the same as having the originals in my hand.
Read them I did, in one night to 4 o'clock in the morning.
So now some of the blanks and lapses that were in my set letters were filled in. But it opened up other avenues with clues to other relatives. They contained names of family, if only Uncle John, cousin Sam, or Aunt Sally. Jennie B's were full of gossip from the neighborhood, to how the crops where doing, or mundane details of her life. Ira's were about his life in camp, on the march, hunting down a pig or cow for food, or looking over a field of hundred's of dead soldiers bodies. Somehow he managed to spend a lot of his time in the rear behind the fighting. They both contained the in's and out's of their relationship, such as it was, so far apart. Lover's quarrels and spats were just the same in the 1860's as they are today. I don't believe he got back to Ohio more than a couple of times from Sept 1862 to Sept of 1865.
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