The collections at the Minnesota Historical Society are filled with items like the shirt.
Objects like this ordinary shirt, worn and frayed and dark with blood of its last two owners.
If you look closely , you can see faint embroidery on the pockets, spelling out the initials J.B.
Maybe these initials were stitched by a mother or a sweetheart. Maybe some future historian will be combing through the casualty lists of the Battle of Nashville and put a name on the Confederate soldier who never came home.
"This shirt saved the life of a Minnesota soldier, said Sondra Reierson of the Historical Society. The fact that even with the shirt, Mills was able to survive his battlefield wounds in that day and age is only matched by the shirt surviving.
The Mills family kept the shirt safe and beautifully preserved for 157 years, donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society last week. It will go on display at the new visitor center opening next year at the Historic Fort Snelling at Bdote.
The story of Henry Mills, who was about 31 years old at the Battle of Nashville, had many more chapters after his Civil War years. He came home, raised a family and lived to see a brand new century. He served as a state arsenal keeper, ran a grocery and was elected Justice of the Peace.
Born in 1833, he died in 1925 at the age of 92.
--Old Secesh
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