Jeremiah Browning and Elizabeth Taggart Mansfield spent most of their lives in the farming counties of east-central Ohio. Jeremiah Browning Mansfield (b. 1841), the second-oldest son of Samuel and Elizabeth Mansfield, was born in Ohio and raised on his father's farm in Wayne Township, Jefferson County. After several years of study at Richmond College, he and his older brother Oliver joined the 52nd Regiment OVI Company E of the Union Army. During the American Civil War, Jeremiah participated in the Battle of Chickamauga and the Battle of Perrysville and then served at Camp Sheridan in Nashville, Tennessee until the end of the war. Elizabeth "Lizzie" Taggart (b. 1845) was raised in Harrison County, Ohio. Her father, James, was a well-to-do farmer in Greene Township, and her brother Milton was educated at Oberlin College and at the University of Michigan Law School. Lizzie and her sisters were educated in the area where they lived, and Lizzie achieved her teaching certification in 1863.
After several years of courtship, Jeremiah Browning Mansfield and Elizabeth Taggart were married on December 23, 1869 in Harrison County, Ohio. By 1880, they had settled in Wells Township, Jefferson County, where Jeremiah farmed and Lizzie kept house for a growing family of five children.
The Jeremiah B. and Elizabeth Taggart Mansfield Papers, 1810-1898, consist of correspondence, essays, and several miscellaneous papers.
This collection may be useful to scholars interested in the social and political climate of northeastern Ohio during the 1860s, to researchers studying Civil War correspondence, and to scholars of early eastern-central Ohio history. These papers include letters written over a twenty-year period to James Carrick, an early settler of Harrison County, Ohio and ancestor of the Mansfield/Taggart family. Correspondence between Jeremiah and his family and friends includes commentary on abolition; the progress of the Civil War; the 52nd Regiment, OVI Company E in which he served; and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln written while Jeremiah was stationed in an occupied Southern city. The correspondence between Lizzie and her friends comments on social interests and activities of young people and on the war and its effects on their lives. Lizzie's brother Milton Taggart's letters to his sisters describe Oberlin College, its strong abolitionist position, Michigan Law School, and, later, his service as a Union soldier.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by family name and then chronologically by document type.
Processed by Rebecca M. Johnson in 1992.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 4592 Jeremiah B. and Elizabeth Taggart Mansfield Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Elizabeth A. Grissinger, 1984.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.