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Captain Charles M. Blackford's Home Source: News, Lynchburg, Va. Tuesday Morning June 4, 1895 page 3
[headline] The Lawn Party The party given last night at the lovely home of Captain Charles M. Blackford on Diamond Hill, for the benefit of the building fund of St. Paul's church, was one of the best arranged and most elegantly conducted affairs of the kind ever held in this city.
The guests were received amidst the numberless flashing lanterns, by Miss Jeanie Vandegrift, Mrs. Chas. M. Blackford, Mrs. Edmund Schaefer, Mrs. S. P. Halsey, Mrs. J Holmes Smith, Mrs. W H. Steptoe, Mrs. D. W. Timberlane and Mrs. P. Dirone.
After a pleasant reception the guests were handed over to the charming young ladies, whose duty, as waitresses, was to see that each and every one was amply supllied with delicacies of the choicest description. Among the waitresses were Misses Susie Nowlin, Hattie Plunkett, Lizzie Craighill and Mary Gish, Lisle Sears, Mary Garland and Ada Radford. The lemonade stand, a popular attraction, was in chage of Misses Gertrude Howard and Tucker Clark.
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STAUTON VINDICATOR FRIDAY MORNING, MAR. 27, 1896
An Unique Book.
It is an ill requital of a favor, to bring down upon him a horde of book borrows, but we cannot help saying a word about a book kindly loaned us by Dr. Benj. Blackford. It is "Memoirs of Life in and Out of the Army in Virginia During the War between the States," complied by Susan Leigh Blackford from original and cotemporaneous correspondence and diaries, annotated and edited for the private use of their family, by her husband, Charles Minor Blackford." It is a unique work in many respects. One is that of the two volumes only thiry-five copies were printed, and these for the use only of the family connection. It is printed by the J. P. Bell Co., Lynchburg, 1896.
To us it has been one of the most fascinating books we have ever read. It is the drama of the war passing before you in the field and in home. The three central figures are the young husband and wife--they were both young when the war broke out--and the venerable father of the husband, Mr. Wm. M. Blackford, the cashier of the bank. The scenes rapidly alternate in the drama throught the letterws of the husband from the field, the replies of his wife from their home, and the diary of the father at his home. The diary of te father, one of those old time Virginia gentlemen with the heart of a patroit, runs through the varied changes from home to field until at last, cast down at the fate of his State and worn out by his effort to help those who needed help he passes away by death before the war closes. He had five sons in the field. Mrs. Blackford has by her deft
