From the Museum Store bookstore

"Telling the story of our region
and its people...." Here are
some of the Museum Store's best-sellers.

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Myra Inman, A Diary of the Civil War in East Tennessee, William R. Snell, editor.
Hardcover, $35

In 1859, a thirteen-year-old-girl began a diary, detailing the emotions and events of everyday life. Daily life in her small hometown of Cleveland, Tennessee was not destined to remain quiet and routine, however. When the Civil War began, the diary entries provide a firsthand account of the sorrows inflicted when the Civil War tore families apart in the border South. Myra, a staunch Confederate, gave a vivid account of the war, how it divided her community and left misery in its wake. Her diary became a bosom friend to whom she could confide her pain and grief. While she never knew the historical importance of her diary,
her descendants did, and preserved this precious legacy.

Like the famous diary of Anne Frank, Myra Inman's diary begins with ordinary events and proceeds to tell the story of a child's view of the horrors of war. This book offers a unique perspective on the Civil War -- that of a child in the borderlands, where families were torn apart by differing loyalties.

William R. Snell is professor of history at Lee University. His previous publications include Hard Times Remembered and From War to Peace, both in-depth studies of an East Tennessee county's history.

According to the book’s preface:

"Bradley Divided is a story of discovery. It is a story of one county in Southeastern Tennessee where the bloodiest war in our nation’s history irrevocably altered the area for generations. It is a story of how the author, a retired librarian who has spent most of her life in Cleveland and Bradley County, discovered the complex history of how the war affected East Tennessee.

"The book began with a discovery that the author’s grandfather, who died four months after she was born, had fought in the Union army during the Civil War. . . .

"As the author continued her research, she discovered how the deep divisions between North and South were played out in the lives of individual men and women in Bradley County. She discovered -- during seven years of research that took her to libraries as far north as Ohio and to dusty attics just a few miles from her house -- that the war was not all fighting. The war was about the hardships of the people left at home, and about the tension between friends who chose different sides in the conflict. . . ."

— Alice Murray Wright, Editor

Robert Lee was born in Halifax, Virginia in 1798, seven years before Robert E. Lee was born. Some people claim they were cousins, but no documentation was found. He moved to Sequatchie Valley, Tennessee as a teenager and on to Bradley County. He was opposed to secession and was a strong Union man when the Civil War broke out. One of his sons joined the Union Army. The third son was a very religious man who refused to fight and hid out in the White Oak Mountains.

The Indian discovery on the Lee farm added a prehistoric view to the historic facts of the Civil War. The archeological report of Indian activity, back to before the time of Christ gives a good picture of things that happened on the Lee farm.

Softcover, 82 pages.

$19.95

Hardcover, 458 pages, 1986

This book is no longer in publication and only a limited number are available at the Museum Center Museum Store. It is an excellent history of Cleveland written by William R. Snell, Cleveland's historian.

$15.99