CANFIELD — Retired attorney Timothy R. Brookes of East Liverpool was the main speaker Thursday for a lecture centered around a Civil War soldier’s diary.

Brookes is a longtime historian and collector of primary source documents such as original photos and diaries. He is a devoted member of the Civil War Roundtable.

The focused individual for Brookes’ talk was Jacob Shenkel, an East Liverpool man who joined the Pennsylvania 62nd Infantry. Brookes started the talk with the story about how he started collecting source documents for Shenkel.

“In 1984, a friend called me one day and said a family in West Virginia was moving and had a nice World War I jacket for sale,” Brookes said. “So I took the drive across the (Ohio) River to check it out.”

He said the jacket belonged to WWI veteran Elwyn Shenkel. He asked the people if they had any more antique items and he was led to an old, battered desk. He opened the drawers and found four tintype photos. The photos were of Jacob Shenkel, Elwyn’s grandfather.

That started a collection that led Brookes out west and a relative that has Jacob’s diary. He made contact and ended up receiving the diary. Brookes said the diary was detailed and described Jacob’s experience during the Battle of Gettysburg.

“His writings offer a powerful first-hand account, not only of the battle itself, but also of his time caring for the wounded afterwards as a nurse,” Brookes said. “On a lighter note, Shenkel also appeared in several staged Civil War photographs and had the opportunity to hear President Abraham Lincoln deliver his address in person.”

Jacob was said to be one of a handful of East Liverpool men who traveled to Pittsburgh to join the Pennsylvania 62nd Infantry. That unit was involved with the Peninsula Campaign, including the Seven Day Battle in 1862, the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, and Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863.

One of the many interesting photos Brookes had in his collection is one of an embalmer’s tent. Brookes said at the time there was a huge demand for post-battle photography and in many cases, soldiers would “play dead” for a quick click of the camera. In the embalmer’s tent photo, Jacob is posed in one of two coffins.

Joining Brookes at the event was retired deputy Mickey Yurko, who is a member of the Knifemakers Guild. He brought part of his personal collection of shadow boxes showing artifacts from the battlefield.

In an Abraham Lincoln shadow box, Yurko had a button from a Civil War battlefield, a piece of brick from Lincoln’s Springfield, Illinois, home, an 1863 Indianhead penny, and a wood block from a witness tree that was around when the Civil War took place. Also in the box was a special scalpel.

“The knife design was traced from a scalpel from a Gettysburg museum,” Yurko said. “I fashioned it from the drawing they allowed me to make of the historic scalpel.”

He also had historic pens for sale that he hand-carved and assembled.

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