Facts & Findings - In the Closet Behind the Wall

Check out this interesting NY Times article about a bunch of artifacts uncovered in an old house upstate:

When Carmen Artache and her husband, Balmes Rosa, bought a 200-year-old house in Bloomville, N.Y., in the Catskills, they set about erasing the many renovations of previous owners. In the process of revealing the original structure, they discovered a closet hidden behind a wall, and a cache of old papers inside.

The papers, more than 200 letters, notices, articles and other documents, belonged to S. B. Champion, the founder and editor of The Bloomville Mirror, a weekly newspaper published from 1851 to 1871. Almost all the documents, which were in a canvas bag, were from the Civil War years, and included everything from a local boy’s Army enlistment paper (Champion notarized it), to a love poem written by a soldier to his Mary back home. Read more.