The core of this accession is a set of forty-six letters written by various members of the Pearson and Johnson families to each other during the Civil War years and the years immediately before and after the war. Included are love letters between Jefferson Lafayette Pearson and Mary Abigail Johnson, letters from the soldiers in the family to their brothers and sisters and in-laws, and letters between the women in the two families on the home front during the war. Topics covered include family matters, camp life and drilling in the Confederate army, political topics (the coming of the war and Confederate conscription), the efforts of soldiers and their family members to find substitutes, and agriculture before and during the war.

Also included in this collection are two books that include transcriptions of the letters in the collection, as well as photocopies of some of them. Also included in these books are transcripts of additional letters, some during the war, but most after the war (up until 1936), involving the Pearson and Hammond families. The Hammond family was connected to the Pearson family through the marriage of Susan Laura Pearson (Jefferson and Mary Abigail’s daughter) to Benjamin Cicero Hammond of Coosa County, Alabama. In addition to the transcripts and photocopies, one of the books also contains family history research on the Pearson, Johnson, and Hammond families. Finally, the collection also includes a book with transcripts of letters from U.S. Army Captain Frank Samuel Johnson, mostly from his army service in 1945-1946 in the Philippines immediately following World War II. Johnson was the grandson of Ida Cinderella Hammond Lessley, sister of Benjamin Cicero Hammond. Johnson’s service in the Philippines involved investigating war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers during the war. The three books in the collection were compiled in 1985 by Mona Allison Wamick, who is related by marriage to the three families involved.