Amos A. Yeakel was born February 26, 1843, in West Greenville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania and died June 25, 1912, in Vineland, New Jersey. The diary is a two-volume pocket diary written during the American Civil War between August 19, 1862, and March 14, 1865. It covers the entire period of Yeakel’s service in Company G, of the 145th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Following his mustering into service, the diary deals with Yeakel becoming a soldier, including a prolonged time in a military convalescent camp and a military hospital where he suffered from a vague collection of non-life-threatening illnesses that nonetheless kept him from front line duty for nearly a year. He is then re-mustered into service and is involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the war at various skirmishes and battles, including Spotsylvania Court House and Petersburg, during Ulysses S. Grant’s Spring campaign of 1864. Yeakel was taken prisoner on June 22, 1864 at Petersburg and spent his time as a prisoner in the notorious Andersonville Prison (Camp Sumter) prisoner-of-war camp and other Confederate prison camps. He talks about the terrible ordeal of being held prisoner under appalling conditions, where a number of his comrades died died from malnutrition and disease. Yeakel managed somehow to survive this ordeal, and the diary ends as he is finally paroled in a prisoner exchange in early 1865.
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