Saw these 4 books at a relative's (not sure where the 1st of the 5 books was) and skimmed through them a little. Anyone here have them or know much of them? It seemed to be very "straight from the source" type of stuff, letters and reports from that part of the war.

Anyways, I thought they were cool and figured I would share. They may become part of my own library one day.

As a follow up I have the Antietam volumes of the first printing from the 1880s and a first edition of Grant's Memoirs that were owned by a Union Veteran who made some notes in them from his perspective.

Also earlier this year a lady from Alabama was offering an original set (minus about 5 or 6 volumes) that were originally owned by a pretty well known staff officer from the Army of Northern Virginia. I was making some enquiries for her trying to sell them but wasn't getting much traction due to it being an incomplete set and the bookshelf space it requires to store them. I think most people are content to use the on-line versions now and something like original versions are more for collectors. Her's being incomplete and some volumes in poor shape was a bigger impediment than the fame of her ancestor was a selling point.

The volumes you have there and the complete set I have are a reprint from the 1980s. As I recall they were sold on a subscription basis and they sent five volumes each month until the whole thing arrived. If all you have is the first five, I'm guessing whoever ordered them decided to opt out after the first month.

Thank you very much for the input, BQ78! I will try to glean some more information on how these came to be for the family members.

As you said, when I started looking through these and seeing how limited the date coverage actually is, I figured that there must be a huge lineup of physical books out there that cover the entire war. Good to know a more accessible online version exists.

I still think I would love to have these, mainly as a memento and collection item. If you have picture(s) of your set of these books and feel comfortable posting, please do! Would be cool to see.

Ha I would have to clear the crap in front of those shelves and that's too big a task right now. Suffice to say the picture would look like yours X32

As I said, I typically go on line to use them now, so I put all my little statues and knick knacks in front of the OR's. I have two five shelf bookcases with the army and navy ORs filling them and the last 6 volumes spilling over to a third book case. Where the army records are in black binding the navy ones are in navy blue. The Naval records only take up two shelfs while the army ones take up the rest.

If memory serves, the complete set occupies at least one, maybe two complete shelf sections in the Evans library annex.

There is also a companion set of sorts that is naval records.