Sarah knew that legal documents would only back up what she already knew.
What she needed were newspaper articles, diaries and letters from the period. Such things existed, she was sure. St. Augustine had been occupied by Union forces long before the war’s end, and it had never been burned to the ground. Many of the old houses had attics, and those attics often yielded treasures offering insights into the past. Even now, despite the intervening years, people often found old trunks in crawl spaces, or stashes of Confederate bills stuffed into cubbyholes or under old floorboards. Even Spanish coins still surfaced now and then.
It wasn’t a hopeless case.
Vicky Hind, one of the librarians, was happy to assist Sarah.
“Those old bones got you thinking, huh?” she asked sympathetically. “Well, legend and history are often one and the same, you know. Here’s a memoir written in 1908 by a woman whose father came down after the Union established command of the city. She was born in 1860 and came here with her mother when she was just two years old. She self-published her journal in 1908, when she was nearly fifty. She died a few years later, so we’re lucky she got it out there. Anyway, take this and have a seat in the General’s Room, and I’ll see what else I can find for you.”
Sarah thanked her and took a seat in the room that had gotten its name because a Confederate general had been born there. He hadn’t surrendered when Lee had. Instead, he’d gone to Texas, hoping to lead his unit into Mexico to establish a new order. His mother had remained in the house until her death, a feisty old woman who reveled in causing trouble for the “damn Yankee invaders,” as she called them.
Sarah started reading and found a charming personality developing as she turned the pages. She found herself fascinated by the writing alone. The author, Sadie Hanrahan, didn’t remember much about the war, but she did recall the days after. There had been a great deal of bitterness in the city, despite the fact that it had been in Federal hands for years, and that many of the citizens had never wanted Florida to secede—they had always needed their Yankee tourist dollars. It had been a difficult time. President Lincoln had been assassinated. John Wilkes Booth had been hunted down and shot, and his co-conspirators hanged, but many blamed all Southerners for the death of the president. And so many in the South had been stripped of their homes, their heritage and more.
Sadie’s first pages were filled with tales of growing up and vivid descriptions of buildings that hadn’t changed to this day. There were also some very funny anecdotes about learning to deal with the cumbersome clothing women had to wear, even in the summer heat. And then Sarah hit the jackpot.