PHOTO BY JESSE DAVIS / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
LOVE ON THE MENU … Volunteers serve finger sandwiches during Saturday’s Valentine Tea put on by the Museum of Fulton County at History Manor in Wauseon. The event featured a brief presentation on Civil War love letters.
By: Jesse Davis
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
jesse@thevillagereporter.com
Area residents celebrated Valentine’s Day with a touch of history Saturday, February 14, 2026 at the Museum of Fulton County’s History Manor in Wauseon. During the museum’s annual Valentine Tea, attendees at three seatings enjoyed a variety of scones, sandwiches, and desserts.
Along with that was a presentation on Civil War love letters, featuring soldier Amaziah Clark of Fulton County and his correspondence with his eventual wife, Lydia Ann Markley.
According to volunteer Norma Dickson, who gave the presentation, Markley and Clark were neighbors in Fulton County in 1860. They were 18 and 21, respectively, when Markley began corresponding with him after he enlisted in the 67th Ohio Infantry Regiment in the Union Army in November 1863.
“Letters were an essential thing in the Civil War for the soldiers. Those letters connected them with their family and loved ones that they had left behind. The letters told us about the battles, about the casualties, and his letters also included his feelings toward Lydia,” Dickson said.
Dickson said 32 of Clark’s letters were recovered and preserved, but none of Markley’s letters survived. In one of the earliest letters, just a few days before Christmas of 1863, Clark wrote of his love for Markley.
In other letters, Clark assured her of his moral nature compared to other soldiers who drank and gambled, told her how he was saving his wages to fund their later life together, and informed her when he was shot in the face by a Rebel soldier through a hole in the fortifications he was inspecting at the time.
“It knocked out one tooth, loosened the rest of the teeth on that side. It is very sore and hurts to eat. It was a small ball and only made a small hole in my mouth. It will hurt the looks of me some, but I came by it honestly,” Clark wrote, according to Dickson.
The couple would eventually marry in March of 1866, three months after Clark returned home from the war. They went on to raise six children in Fulton County.
Dickson also read excerpts from other love letters written during the war. She pointed out that soldiers often seized the correspondence from the opposing forces and published them in newspapers to mock their enemy.
One excerpt was from what Dickson said is the most famous letter recovered from the Civil War, the last letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife several days before the First Battle of Bull Run in which he was mortally wounded.
“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; and yet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, and bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield.
“The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long.
“And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us,” Ballou wrote.
What is now History Manor was once home to the Museum of Fulton County until its State Route 108 facility opened in 2018, though the structure previously wore a variety of hats.
Museum Events Planner and Business Manager Doris Piercefield said the building was originally a three-story brick building and served as Wauseon’s high school, until structural issues saw it reduced to two stories and transformed into a hospital.
The building was later converted into apartments, with the large front porch removed. When the museum took over the property, the front porch was reconstructed, Piercefield believes, through a local Rotary Club project.
History Manor is now the site of the annual Valentine Tea and Mother’s Day Tea, but is otherwise open by appointment only.