During my June visit to the National Archives (Washington, DC), I pulled the Civil War pension packet for John B. Creps. The find of this trip was cousin John’s diary, kept by him during his Civil War service and found in his pension packet1.  See this article Introducing John B Creps, and this article to read the entire (its short) diary. John wrote in his diary daily sharing gossip and news of friends, conveying the mundane drudgery of a soldier waiting to be deployed. Some entries are long, while he has just a brief sentence or two on other days. But the question remains, why or how did his diary…