When Colonel William Leonard died in 1901, among his effects was found a lovely jewelry box containing a simple ring carved of cow bone and engraved with his birthdate and the year of his imprisonment during the Civil War. This humble memento, so carefully preserved, was made for him by his men to mark his 46th birthday when they were all prisoners in the notorious Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia.

Also found was his journal, which begins when he was colonel in Purnell’s Legion Infantry and charged with protecting telegraph and rail lines in Maryland and Virginia, and ends after he was paroled from Libby Prison and returned home to Maryland.

The bone ring and journal writings were passed down through his descendants, and his memory has been kept alive through family stories. Leonard’s great-granddaughter Gari Carter, who previously published the Civil War journals of another ancestor, Franklin Dick, now presents Col. Leonard’s journal, richly annotated and supplemented with family lore and local history.