I have a number of original documents and a tintype from 1850-65 period. I am having all these professionally preserved and mounted. Pros can do wonders with paper documents and letters to preserve them and also to bring out faded writing. I have leave orders for H. H. Flanigan that were just almost faded to nothing. A professional restorer did a job on them and on a deed from 1850 and now I can read them and they will not continue to deteriorate. I have a photo of H.H. Flanigan and Archer Avary taken in the 1920's and I am having one enlarged and put in a frame and the other put onto non-acidic paper backing and reframed. I don't know what will happen with these when I am gone, but maybe a civil war archivist will want them. Both are wearing parts of their original uniforms from civil war. My brother is searching for wad of confederate bills I once had when my grandmother gave them to me along with a bunch of other old stuff. Older people should not give these things to kids because I think half of it was lost. Confederate money was just a reminder of what was lost to that generation I think. What was Georgia like in the first few decades after the civil war? I think for regular people it was hard. H. H. Flanigan was almost deaf after the war due to camp illness or being too close to arty firing. No disability compensation for him until he was 60 something, and then as indigent vet which he was not as far as I know. A stick in the eye to the yankee government I think. I have read that just about any confederate vet who applied for the pension could get it. Doctor A. Avary got one I am pretty sure. He lived until 1937. He was an imposing figure from the snapshot I have of him in 1926. 80 years old and ramrod straight in his cav. boots and hat with his old pistol by his side.

John