- US TxAM-C 97-1/1
- File
- 1862-1865; 1920-1944
Part of John Henry Bliler Diary
- Six notebooks or exercise tablets, each measuring 26 x 21 cm.
- Five of the exercise tablets have red cloth taped binding at the tops, with white machine ruled pages and white paper covers, illustrated with a design which includes the United States flag with 44 gold stars and thirteen stripes on it, aloft against a pale blue sky, with "THE STARS AND STRIPES" in gold letters outlined in red at the top.
- Since these tablets couldn't have been produced at least until after 1890 when Wyoming became the forty-fourth state in the Union, this copy of the diary had to have been copied out twenty-five years or more after the original entries were made in 1862-1865.
- The sixth exercise tablet is similar in size, but with green tape binding at the top, a buff-colored cover, and a design incorporating a leaf and vine design in which the words "A COLUMBUS EXERCISE TABLET, PRICE 5 CTS" is divided in the center by a round seal of a sun rising over a tree-surrounded field of harvested wheat sheaves labeled "THE SEAL OF OHIO LINE". Below is an underlined space labeled "Name" and beside it another underlined space labeled "Teacher".
- All six notebooks have been rubber-stamped in black ink on covers and all pages, probably by a later owner in the twentieth century, with a three-line label: "Civil War Diary of, John Henry Bliler, 1862-1863-1864-1865".
- Front covers of the notebooks are also inscribed in ink as well, apparently in John Henry Bliler's hand, with a numbering sequence as follows:
- "no 2 of 7 AND No. 1 of 7"
- "No 3 OF 7, From November 11, 1863, To May 16 [carat] inclusive 1864"
- "NO 4 OF 7, From May 17, 1864, To [unclear] 3rd [ditto i.e. 1864] inclusive"
- "NO 5 OF 7, From October 4, 1864, to November 30 inclusive 1864"
- "From November 30, 1865 to April 12, 1863 [Note: part of this in pencil to replace information from a torn area on cover], No 6 OF 7"
- "No 7 OF 7"
- Pages of the diary are numbered continuously in the lower right corner of each notebook in pencil: 1-9 [i.e. 8], 9, 11-25 [notebook "No 2"]; 26-44 [notebook "No 3"]; 45-64 [notebook "No 4"]; 65-83 [notebook "No 5"]; 84-106 [notebook "No 6"]; 107-123 [notebook "No 7"].
- The penciled page numbers and a few other notes were probably made by a later owner of the diary, to construct the index which accompanies the photostatic copy of the original pages and the typewritten transcript held in a blue three-ring binder, described in Series 2. The text of the black-inked three-line rubber stamped label on the notebooks' covers and pages match exactly that of the typed label affixed to the front cover of this blue three-ring binder.
- Each of the first five exercise books is also stamped in blue ink on the cardboard back cover with a three-line label: "From STEIGLER BROS., 520 Central Avenue, HOT SPRINGS, - ARK." Steigler Brothers is a bookstore and may have been the original purveyor of the blank exercise books.
- Entries written by Bliler are in pencil and black or blue ink. All pages have come apart from the top bindings of the exercise tablets. Some water damage obscures a few entries, and a very few pages have torn edges by which portions of entries have been lost irretrievably, but the handwriting is overall very legible.