Relic on the Lethe

One of my hopes was that as I worked my way through the local newspapers, I could uncover a few unknown writers, authors, and their stories. I very nearly thought my next post would be on dentistry, when I decided to flip over instead to the poem in the June 8, 1866 edition of Winchester News . I am happy to report I can save writing about the proliferation of vulcanized rubber for another day, as the poetry section uncovered a mostly-forgotten local author. The poem, titled "The Skeleton Army, Or The Dead Parade," is credited to C. Toler Wolfe . It is fairly lengthy and more suitable for a spooky Halloween edition, so unlike the other poems, we will not reprint here. It made my ears perk up, as here was a poem with a proper credit that seems to have been locally written, per the note at the end. Was Wolfe well-known? The answer is "yes, but no." Time has largely forgotten him; you can pull up an 1852 volume of his work, printed in Winchester. Entitled Odds and Ends