Civil War Collections
The Binghamton University Libraries Civil War Collections consist of seventeen individual collections of materials. Together the collections contain over 1700 letters, diaries, photographs, account books, postcards, and other ephemera which date from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, but are centered on the Civil War years 1861-1865.
Letters are by far the largest component of the collections and many of the letters were written by soldiers at the front, or in Army hospitals, to their family and friends back home. At its core the Civil War Collections are a local history resource with emphasis on collections pertaining to the counties in the immediate Binghamton, New York area, that is Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Tioga, and Tompkins Counties.
Collections of particular interest from outside those counties have also been included, such as a collection from Montgomery County which consists of letters written by Ten Eyck Fonda, the grandfather of the actor Henry Fonda.