Letters from Charles B. Safford to Clara Safford, 1860-1868

This collection contains letters to and from Charles B. Safford, an Illinois soldier who led Company H of the 107th Regiment of the United States Colored Troops during the US Civil War, and his wife Clara Safford Brooke, who remarried after his death in 1868. Wartime letters from Charles to Clara were primarily sent from locations in Kentucky and Tennessee, including hospitals in Nashville, Tennessee, and Lexington, Kentucky; and from Camp Distribution, Virginia, with a few from North Carolina. Some of his letters use racist language. There are also letters to Charles from Clara, mainly sent from Malta, Illinois, as well as a January 11, 1866, letter to him from Fort Ellsworth, Virginia, by a Doc Willson of the 107th Regiment, Company H, asking for Charles's help getting him out of an unspecified situation. One letter to Clara from the Headquarters Department of North Carolina, dated April 2, 1865, refers to her failed attempt to petition the president for her husband's release from the army. There are a number of letters to Clara from Thomas S. Brooke, whom she married in 1871, as well as letters related to property issues sent from a J. V. Willett in Malta to "Thomas Brooks." One of the Willett documents is signed by Thomas S. Brooke. The collection also contains letters from other friends and family members, including Edward P. Safford, Charles’s brother and a Civil War soldier; Charles’s mother, Mary L. Estabrook; Clara’s cousins Mary and Sophy Palmer in South Grove, Illinois, and Samuel E. Gill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The collection contains five undated, unidentified photographs (including one ambrotype), as well as empty envelopes and newspaper clippings. Some of the letters are incomplete.