Adelbert M. Bly, known throughout his letters as “Dell,” was a rural school teacher in Fond du Lac County at the opening of the Civil War. On August 5, 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Wisconsin Volunteers, 32nd Regiment, Company B. He served through the remainder of the war, rising to the rank of 1st Lieutenant.
Although the 173 letters in this collection span a period from 1862 to 1910, by far the greatest number are those exchanged between Dell Bly, while he was a soldier, and Anna Burdick, a rural school teacher in his home county. There are several letters between Bly and his friends or family, and occasionally the parents report to their son on farm conditions and prices in time of war; but the Bly letters essentially tell the story of Dell's three years with the Union Army as he described it to Anna.
From his training at Camp Bragg, Oshkosh, Bly went with his regiment to Memphis, Tennessee and spent the minter of 1862-63 in skirmishes in western Tennessee. The men were back in Memphis by spring and for eight months remained stationed there, partly by special request of the citizens, due to the excellent behavior of the men. This reputation earned them the title of the “Bandbox Regiment.”
In January of 1864 Bly returned to Ripon and Madison to recruit volunteers; by February he was back with his regiment at Vicksburg, Mississippi. From there the army started east to Decatur, Alabama, and then to Georgia to take part in the siege of Atlanta. His letters of August and September 1864, concerning the battle for Atlanta, are the most descriptive and detailed in the collection as far as the war is concerned.
Although Bly was with Sherman's forces in the “March to the Sea” he gives no details of the march, writing from Savannah that he would like to tell about the eventful march but he was “too cold to write.” From Savannah, where he spent December of 1864, Ely's regiment moved northward past Charleston, S.C., Raleigh, N.C., Alexandria, Va., and on to Washington, D.C., where he was mustered out on June 12, 1865.
The war story ends here, although Bly apparently kept up a limited correspondence with several old comrades through the next thirty years. In his letters he mentioned other Company B volunteers such as Captain William R. Hodges and Captain Albert S. Bixby, 2nd Lieutenant Luther Spalding, Private David Brown, and Private James Conner.
Dell Bly and Anna Burdick married following the war, and evidently took up farming, although it seems his health was never very good. An interesting observation that might be made concerning Bly's war record is that although he took part in a great deal of fighting during the three years he was a soldier, and marched many miles in all kinds of weather, he seldom mentions feeling bad. He was evidently never wounded or seriously ill. Bly's last letter in the collection is dated October 12, 1898; and a letter from their daughter Mabel in 1910 tells of Anna's death in September of that year, but makes no mention of Dell.
With the collection is a long poem, probably composed by Anna, sent to Dell while he was with the army. Also, a form is filed at the end of the letters listing Daniels and Sherwood of Washington, D.C. as authorized military and naval claim agents.
