ARC COL 990302-F - Civil War diaries - Isaiah Corban Transcribed Pages

ARC COL 990302-F - Civil War diaries - Isaiah Corban Transcribed Pages

Author: VCPL Special Collections department

Year: 1864

Isaiah Corban’s diary in which he chronicles the activities of himself and the Fourteenth and Twentieth Regiments, Indiana Volunteer Infantry from January 1864 to August 1864. As a member of the Fourteenth Regiment, Corban was a sentry and ambulance driver and fought in the battles of Morton’s Ford, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. Upon joining the Twentieth Regiment, Corban continued his ambulance driving duties during the regiment’s participation in the protracted but successful Union siege of Petersburg, Virginia. In addition to recording the regiment’s movements from one location to another, he also provided terse descriptions of ambulance trips to Fredericksburg and City Point and makes brief entries about the monotony of camp life and the weather. Corban would have been unidentifiable if he had not made a brief mention in his diary on February 20, 1864 of his marriage to an “E.F. Basham” in Evansville. Archives staff did research in the WPA Marriage Index for Vanderburgh County and found documentation of a marriage between “Isiah Corbin” and “Emma F. Basham.” The “Corbin” variation of the name appears several times but because the Isiah Corbin who appears in the WPA index later