Family History

I was so excited by Elizabeth Daniels’s article “The Children of Gettysburg” (May/June) that 1 could barely finish it. The “precocious eighteen-year-old” Henry Eyster Jacobs was my great-grandfather. He became an instructor at Gettysburg College and later professor, dean, and president of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He was a leader in the church and a well-respected Lutheran historian.

Jacobs’s account of the battle exists in his memoirs, which my father, Henry Eyster Horn, edited during the late 1930s. In 1974 my father painstakingly typed the memoirs on mimeograph stencils, and I proofread, mimeographed, and collated them. He then sent the three volumes to Lutheran seminary libraries throughout the country, projecting their use as a source in American Lutheran Church history. As a librarian and holder of an undergraduate degree in history, I am thrilled to see “family” history become source material for “real” history because the material was made accessible to all.

Thank you, American Heritage and Ms. Daniels.