What I learned most from doing the markup was to get a much clearer picture of the various locations described when I marked up for placeNames. When I first read through the letter, it was difficult to conceptualize in my head where/what every location he referred to was, but as I was doing the markup and cross-referencing to the document, I started comparing the various names with Lynn’s hand drawn map, which helped me visually think about it. I also had to think about how to represent the map in my markup, and while I was interested in perhaps inserting a photo of just the map into my markup, it proved to be a little too difficult, so I ended up just marking spaces every time the writing wrapped around his map.
Additionally, when I was first skimming the letter I didn’t really get a sense of what he was talking about in a big picture sense, but marking up the various objects and groups (like Carolinians, or Prisoners) I was able to summarize that most of the letter dealt with the after effects of a battle (I believe the battle of Roanoke), and it seems Linn’s regiment was involved with two main tasks, first the housing and care of the prisoners captured, and second, the transporting of supplies up and down the sound. Unfortunately, as I was not able to view the original archive copy, most of the last words before the line break on the 2nd page were illegible, as the document is slightly folded in the photo, which covers up the last part of each line.
Although much of the letter is spent detailing the mundane day to day activities of army life, I enjoyed the few times in which Linn revealed some of his deeper feelings about what he what he was doing. Such as close to the end of the first page when he says “I hope this war will thoroughly disgust Americans with war.” Lynn does his duties with honor and discipline, although he is anything but a mindless soldier. He seems to take most things in stride, always finding the positive things in his life to keep the tone of his letters light, remarking on the subject that “one cannot expect his pathway to be strewn with flowers.”
