MACON, Ga. (AP) – LeRoy Wiley Gresham’s short, painful life in Macon ended about the same time as the Civil War, but he left behind a legacy treasured by historians.
Starting in 1860 at the age of 12, a few months before Georgia seceded from the Union, he started keeping a diary and did it almost daily until his death on June 18, 1865, two months after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia. Now, for the first time, the diary has been put in book form, called “The War Outside My Window.” It will be available on Amazon beginning Friday, published by Savas Beatie, a company that specializes in historical books.
Janet Croon, a retired history teacher who lives in Virginia, transcribed the diary using the online copies of the original seven volumes in the Library of Congress. She was not able to get her hands on the actual diary.
But she did much more than transcribe it. She is also a genealogist and extensively researched records to create a listing of the many people LeRoy mentions in the book, with details on exactly who they were. The book also includes extensive footnotes explaining, and often correcting, LeRoy’s many statements about events of the war and things happening in Macon at the time.
“It has been an honor to pull this out because it so unique,” Croon said. “It was just a passageway into another time period through someone else’s eyes. I just think it is so valuable for a lot of different reasons.”