Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton (May 13, 1837 – July 31, 1899) was born in Thornbury Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on “Homestead Farm” to Lewis and Ann (nee Garrison) Brinton. 

            Daniel’s brother Joseph sent him to Florida for his health during the winter of 1856-57.[1]  He wrote a book while there entitled, The Floridian Peninsula:  Its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities.  It was the first of many books he wrote on the topics of ethnology, anthropology and linguistics of North and South American culture and history.  The multi-volume set he edited, Library of Aboriginal American Literature, was published in 1880’s, and received the prize medal of the Société Americaine de France.[2]

            Returning to his studies, he was granted an A.M. degree from the Medical Department of Yale in 1858 and received his M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in 1860.  He entered the army as Surgeon of the US Volunteers after he finished a year of study in Paris and Heidelberg, and served as the Medical Director of the 11^th Army Corps, holding the rank of Brevet Lt. Col.   It is said that he suffered from sunstroke during the fall of 1863[3] and, therefore, was sent to Quincy, Illinois, to be the Superintendent of Hospitals until the close of the war.[4]  There he met and married his wife, Sarah Maria Tillson, and they had two children, Robert and Emilia.  After the war, he returned to Pennsylvania and resided in Media on the corner of Baltimore Avenue and Lemon Street.[5]

            His first post-war position was that of editor of the Medical and Surgical Reporter, which was a weekly medical journal in Philadelphia.  He held that position from 1867 to 1887.  He also was made Professor of Ethnology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, in 1884; Professor of American Linguistics and Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1886; and was the President of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia from 1884 to 1889.  He kept active in a number of Anthropological/Ethnological societies abroad and on the continent.

            Brinton’s letters give the reader descriptions about troop movements before, during, and after the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.  He tells of the difference of Hooker’s appearance before and after Chancellorsville, and states in his letter concerning the Battle of Gettysburg, “The wounded came in rapidly so that by the next day we had over a thousand to attend to.  Many of them were hurt in the most shocking manner by shells.  My experience at Chancellorsville was nothing compared to this and I never wish to see such another site.”[6]

            Throughout the letters, there are details on personages such as Gen. Howard, Gen. Schurz, Gen. Barlow, Gen. von Steinwher, Gen. Mead, Gen. Lee, Asst. Adj. Gen. Stowe, Gen. Armistead, Dr. Stiles, Mosby’s Guerillas, and Horatio Worrall.  Brinton also mentions his cook, John Copeland, Sr., who was the father of John Copeland, Jr., of Harper’s Ferry fame.[7]

            Although Brinton is said to have served with the troops at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge[8], the letters in the collection stop at September 1863 and begin again in August 1864 when Brinton writes his family from the United States General Hospital in Quincy, Illinois, where he was superintendent for the remainder of the war.

[3]Brinton Memorial Meeting: Report of the Memorial Meeting held January 16, 1900 under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society.