This book offers a unique look at a typical Illinois farm family across seventy years, through letters of friends and family. The Owen family letters will provide insight into the lives and events of a farming family in Illinois in the 1800s. Between 1840 and 1906, Jason and Abigail Owen and their daughter, Bertha Owen Bice, received eighty-eight letters from family and friends, which they saved. More than half of those letters were from Clarence and Mary Owen, Bertha's brother and sister. Clarence was a soldier who enlisted in the 38th Infantry Regiment, Illinois, at the beginning of the...