Home Scenes and Family Sketches: My Life in Staunton, Virginia, 1823-1864

Home Scenes and Family Sketches was written in 1864 by Staunton, Virginia, publisher and diarist Joseph A. Waddell, but was not published by him until 1900. Privately printed, this limited-edition book slowly vanished on the general market until it became a rarity and, finally, a lost treasure. Its unavailability has represented something of a tragedy for historians, for Waddell's examination of his home and family from 1823 to 1864 was crammed with long-forgotten information about the Waddells, their quirky neighbors, and the town in which they all lived – sometimes not in complete harmony. Now in print for the first time since 1900, Home Scenes and Family Sketches is a chatty, insightful, revealing and frequently funny book. Here are the real-life adventures of exasperated school teachers, misanthropic postmasters, quack doctors, mischievous children and gregarious tavern-keepers. Merchants, slaves, preachers, Indians, soldiers, surgeons, scalawags – they are all here, interacting with the Waddell family and each other, providing color and depth to one of Virginia's most historic communities.This new edition of Home Scenes and Family Sketches not only reproduces Waddell's original footnotes, but offers new, expanded chapter notes that flesh out the narrative. Also included in this edition are seven pages of rare Staunton, Virginia photographs and illustrations.