Norton Parker Chipman

Norton Parker Chipman, graduate of the Cincinnati College of Law

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Here's how my work goes: I have been working on my book for years. And for much of that time, there have been people I need to know more about. People who left almost nothing of themselves to history and yet who were important at a crucial moment in my story. One such person was James Redpath. How wonderful when I found a brand new biography of him last year. And it was a great book!

But poor, ignored Norton Parker Chipman. No such luck for him. Despite being a Civil War officer (Union), the prosecutor of Henry Wirz, and Washington, D.C.'s delegate to Congress, Chipman got a whole lotta nothin' from historians. Until now. A lawyer in California has written a book about Chipman.

As you might imagine, when I learned this I was about as excited as historians get. I slowly arched an eyebrow and thought, "wow." Ok, not really. What I really did was...look up the publisher and ask for the author's email address.

Success! And when I asked him whether Chipman had papers, he said YES! And when I asked him if said papers contained any correspondence from my fella, he said YES!

So I spent part of today on the phone with the California State Library in Sacramento, talking with a lovely archivist in the California History room, confirming that there are 16 volumes (more like scrapbooks) of his accumulated stuff. And contained somewhere within those scrapbooks are letters to/from my dude. All I have to do now is hire myself a little research assistant and get him or her to go transcribe them (microfilm? Ha! Photocopying? Ha!! Digital photography? Double HA!!). Whee!