Local Families Add to Exhibit on Civil War : History: Ventura County residents contributed some of the 200 artifacts on display at the Reagan library.

On July 25, 1862, Col. Edward D. Mason of the 67th Ohio Regiment wrote a letter to his beloved wife, Mae, recounting the horrors of a war that had divided a nation.

For more than a century, the stained parchment letter, penned in the graceful hand of a weary commander, has been carefully tucked away in an antique cedar chest alongside other heirlooms passed down through Sharon Nolan’s family.

“This has never in my lifetime been outside my grandmother’s trunk,” said Nolan, a 56-year-old Ventura resident. “These have all been family treasures.”

But this month, her great-great-grandfather’s account is carefully displayed alongside blue and gray uniforms, tattered flags and other original documents assembled by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum for a seven-month exhibit on the Civil War.

Most of the exhibit’s 200 artifacts have been borrowed from museums and large private collections, but a handful of family treasures such as Nolan’s have been loaned by Ventura County residents.

“Here you have local families who have been holding onto these artifacts because it is part of their family history and part of American history,” said library spokeswoman Lynda Schuler.

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Simi Valley resident Ray Glazner is one of those people. A retired history teacher, Glazner, 54, has cherished family heirlooms from the war as well as an extensive collection of memorabilia he has gathered over the years.

Included in his Civil War-period artifacts are guns, sabers, swords, cartridge boxes and eating utensils. “Everything that would have been carried by a soldier, I have,” he said. “You name it, I’ve got it.”

How about food?

“I have hardtack that is still viable,” he said of the tough bread soldiers carried during the war. “It was hard as a rock when they got it and it still is. I describe it as a cross between a saltine cracker and a book.”

As part of a tight network of Civil War aficionados who organize battle re-enactments, Glazner learned of the Reagan library’s plans for a Civil War exhibit months ago. He immediately contacted the museum and offered part of his collection.

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“I brought in a whole lot of stuff and let them choose what they wanted,” he said. They selected a small grave marker that has been passed down through Glazner’s family, bearing the insignia of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans’ organization created after the war.

Glazner’s star-shaped marker fit one of the exhibit’s central themes, library officials said.

“If you get enough little items that tell stories, they add up to a big story,” Schuler said.

Library officials were pleasantly surprised to find Civil War documents virtually in their own back yard. Altogether, six Ventura and Santa Barbara residents contributed to the Reagan library exhibit--including Reagan himself.

The former President loaned a replica chair from Ford’s Theater, which he keeps in his Century City office, Schuler said.

The collection of artifacts, which includes muskets, uniforms, letters and photographs, is designed to give Californians a glimpse of historical relics that rarely travel west of the Mississippi, officials said.

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Ventura resident John Franchi, who loaned the library part of his extensive collection of artillery shells, has traveled thousands of miles to see gravestones and cannons that mark 130-year-old battlefields.

“I made it my goal to visit all the Civil War battle sites before I expire,” said Franchi, 63. “Everybody has their own thing. Some people like baseball games. I would drive 150 miles to see a battlefield.”

Franchi has no family ties to the war--he’s simply a history buff.

Nolan decided to open her grandmother’s cedar chest to the public for the first time when she learned about the library’s exhibit.

In addition to Col. Mason’s letters to his family, Nolan’s family treasures include a signed photograph of Gen. Stonewall Jackson, a wooden quinine cup, a book of psalms and a bloodstained needlepoint salvaged from the battlefield at Fredericksburg--all of which are included in the exhibit.

Aware of the historical significance, Nolan said her family saved the items for generations. She and her sister now plan to find a permanent home for the artifacts, probably in a museum, once the exhibit ends.

“I think they knew,” Nolan said of her relatives. “They knew this was something that would be historic for America.”