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In 2005, Caroline Heming's parents were cleaning out their home in Hinsdale, Ill., preparing to move into an apartment.
As a dumpster outside the home began to fill with items, Heming's mother, Abigail, snared a box not worthy of trashing, one full of memories and one that may now serve to teach students nationwide about the Civil War.
Inside the box was a collection of battlefield letters written by Heming's great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah Wren, and his wife's nephew, Denis Sullivan, during the American Civil War.
"It's not just dates and places, it really speaks to you," Heming said. "It's the truth."
After finding the letters, Heming, a Bethesda resident, turned to her friend and publisher Debbie Fink, of Bethesda-based Harmony Hearth publishing, to try and determine what to do with them. A few years passed, but when Fink was working on an educational project to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, Heming's letters kept coming back to her.
The letters spawned "Thinking Like Lincoln: Velvet and Steel," a lesson guide for students in kindergarten through eighth-grade, based on one of Wren's 1862 letters. The piece uses one of Wren's letters—penned to his daughter, Abby—and combines it with historical context, lesson ideas, and a glimpse into Wren's thoughts. The guide is the first of a series of six in the "Thinking Like Lincoln" series. Ruth Silverstein, assistant director at Harmony Hearth, said while the focus is teaching about history, there are many lessons to pull from the letters.
"In a day of text messaging, this kind of personal correspondence is important for kids to see," she said. "…the goal is to reach and teach children with multiple learning styles."
The letters touch upon all aspects of life during war: battle, camping, drinking. They are littered with some of the most famous surnames and battles of the war: McClellan, Davis, the battles of Bull Run and Antietam. At one point, Wren mentions being on the Maryland side of the Potomac, presumably within miles of where Heming now lives.
And while the first set of guides was geared toward young students, a second set, "Living by the Letter: Bootstrap to Bootstrap," is being produced for military service men and women. The guides will focus on Lincoln's dreams of justice and freedom, two themes easily recognized by those in the military, Fink said.
"First we want to thank them for carrying on Lincoln's commitment of justice," Fink said, "but we also want to remind them through this that the letters they write now become tomorrow's history."
Fink is teaming up with various defense contractors and the Association of the United States Army, a nonprofit organization that supports the U.S. Army, to fund the project, and hopes to have different publications made for Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Pearl Harbor Day.
Meanwhile, Heming is still digging into her family's history, transcribing the 20-plus letters she found, sifting through Wren's comforting notes, and reading Sullivan's tales of blood and death from the front lines of Hooker's Brigade.
"I came from very simple stock," Heming said. "And now I have all these wonderful treasures and stories about my family."
