Document Type
Finding Aid
Publication Date
2017
Abstract
Joseph Scrivner Ambrose IV was born in 1835 in Clay County, Kentucky, the sixth child of Joseph Scrivner Ambrose III and Hannah Clements Ambrose. J. S. Ambrose IV joined the Confederate States Army as a captain, Company F, 8th Kentucky Cavalry, on September 10, 1862, in Boone County, Kentucky. During the war, Ambrose participated in a Confederate incursion covering hundreds of miles of Union territory during a nearly month-long campaign, known as "Morgan's Raid." Led by General John Hunt Morgan, the legendary raid went deeper into the North than any other Confederate Army campaign, but the men were forced to surrender in July of 1863. Ambrose was held prisoner at the Ohio State Penitentiary, arriving on August 1. In March of 1864, he was moved to Fort Delaware, an island in the middle of the Delaware River, between the states of Delaware and New Jersey. After the war, J. S. Ambrose married Nancy Connley in 1866, in Kentucky, and the couple had two children. Joseph Scriver Ambrose died December 9, 1896, in Paris, Texas.
This collection contains twenty-four letters written by Captain J. S. Ambrose (Captain, Confederate States Army) to his sister (Nannie Dawley of Kentucky) during the Civil War. Ambrose penned all but one of the letters while a prisoner-of-war at the Ohio State Prison and Fort Delaware.
Recommended Citation
Archivists, "Ambrose Civil War Letters" (2017). Guides and Finding Aids. 130.
https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/finding_aids/130
Included in
Archival Science Commons, Cataloging and Metadata Commons, United States History Commons