The Kent Historical Society will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War next week with a theatrical reading of the emotional and detailed letters between Franklin Mills natives Charlotte Morton and her future husband, Adam Weaver, who fought for the Union Army. “Charlotte and Adam: Franklin Mills and the Civil War,” an installment of the historical society’s “All About Kent” series, takes place at 7 p.m. May 17 in Kent State University’s Rockwell Auditorium at 515 Hilltop Drive. There is no charge for parking at the Rockwell Hall parking lot.
Sandra Halem, author of the production and KHS president, said the letters delve deep into what life was like both at home in Portage County and on the battlefield. Adam Weaver and Charlotte Morton eventually married after the war.
“It’s a lovely story about two people who are quite innocent and managed to save some history for us that would have been lost and that’s extremely local and very human,” said Halem, who has been a playwright for over 30 years, writing as Sandra Perlman, her family name. “I thought it would be a nice gift to my community if I could take all these great letters and share them.”
Charlotte Morton, 15 at the time, was a historian, even at a young age, and instructed Adam Weaver, who enlisted at 17 to be with his brother, John, to write to her and record his time at war. Later in life, Charlotte became a noted historian and first-hand source of Kent history. She died in 1939 at 92.
In his letters to Charlotte, while fighting for Ohio’s 104th volunteer regiment, Adam Weaver writes of the horrors of the war including the bloody Battle of Franklin in Tennessee, fought in the fall of 1864 and known as “The Gettysburg of the West.”
“These rebel boys were ordered to advance and were led upon a death as certain and sure to be met with, as there was a God in Heaven. Right into the fury of a foe mostly concealed from their view and worthy of their valor,” Adam Weaver wrote. “The shells from our rifled cannons located north of town, tore dreadful gaps, in the ranks of the rebels, with only the visible effects of causing them to close up the openings and press ever forward.”
The letters were transcribed and published through the Portage County Historical Society in the 1960s by Dudley Weaver, Charlotte and Adam Weaver’s grandson, to commemorate the war’s 100th anniversary, but have not been presented in a theatrical form.
Kent State theater students also lend their part to tell the story, with senior theater studies major Sarah Coon directing the production, and four other theater students reading the letters and narrating.
The audience will not only have the opportunity to enjoy a play about Kent’s history, but also will be able to visit the Kent State Museum’s current exhibit, “On the Home Front: Civil War Fashions and Domestic Life” at no charge that night.
“On the Home Front” focuses on the daily life and experiences of the American civilian population during the Civil War and in the years immediately following. The pieces on exhibit, including women’s and children’s costumes, supplemented with related photographs, decorative arts and women’s magazines are organized thematically.
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