https://www.amazon.com/Story-Life-Autobiography-Treasurer-Hillsdale/dp/B0CWPQ579X
The Story of My Life: Autobiography of the Treasurer of Hillsdale College, 1862-1877
by Lorenzo Reynolds
I found this manuscript among my genealogical papers. In short, Lorenzo was a crotchety pioneer ancestor of mine who got injured before the Civil War, became adept at handwriting and the writing arts, wrote a guide to Hillsdale Michigan among other things, and felt he'd been badly wronged by the leadership of Hillsdale College when he was ousted from the Treasurer's role in the late 1800's. It turns out that if your family has been here since before the Civil War then the story of its survival is the story of how it survived that war as so few actually did. But in his case being badly injured was enough to excuse him from service and at the same time made him driven to accomplish something with his life that he was uniquely suited to.
The College had a huge fire, and later his own building in downtown Hillsdale had a fire, and all this was recorded in this beautiful handwriting on old crinkly paper in my attic. Now I feel a little guilty, having it on Amazon, but I felt his story needed to be told. Now I can use this handwriting in the marketing, I guess; it would be a shame if nobody saw it.
