(radio music playing) (drums) ♪ We'll give him a hearty welcome then,♪ ♪ Hurrah!

Hurrah!

♪ ♪ The men will cheer, the boys will shout ♪ - People have asked me what I would save.

If the place who's going to get destroyed in a fire what would be the most important thing to me?

And I thought it would be the letter with my great grandfather's blood on it.

How does it get any more personal than that.

♪ Hurrah!

Hurrah!

♪ My great grandfather, Captain James Cap Colehour started this place in 1882 when he built the first house in Battle Lake.

And then he added this building here to it in 1886.

It used to be the first resort in the area.

It was a resort hotel.

That's what they had before they had cabins.

Then in 1929, when my grandfather Ernest Wilkins inherited some money he'd married the civil war veterans daughter and he completely remodeled this place inside and out in 1929.

So this is the way it looked like in 1929.

(music continues) My mother left me this property when she died 14 years ago and she'd spent most of her life trying to preserve her family home that she was born and died in.

And I was the last of the family.

So it was up to me to sort out 200 years of family stuff and figure out what to do with it.

And I just felt after going through all of these things that it really needed to be a museum.

The yard work alone is a lot.

That's probably four or five times as big as anybody's yard in town.

We've got 10 times as many trees and the flower beds all take work.

(music continues) It's a large collection.

Originally, I found a chest with nearly 200 civil war letters in it on the third floor.

Then I started to find things all over the house.

One of the first things I found was this sling to his infield rifle.

And I didn't know what that was.

Then after a while I, we got his rifle, Spencer repeater his sleeves to his uniform with bullet holes in each one our 200 civil war letters.

There's at least at least 14 original civil war documents that were from the state of Illinois during the war and his diaries, his notes and books.

He made sure that his story of his civil war experience is well documented.

And if it wasn't for me, it probably would've been all lost.

(music continues) Cap was born January 28th, 1842.

His father was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

And I think he already had a strong sense of patriotism and history interest, right from the start.

When the war started in 1861, he was in Philadelphia working in his brother's grocery store.

And that's when he decided he wanted to join up.

He was, was certainly a true Patriot.

That's why he enlisted.

He wrote union forever.

He wanted to preserve the union.

That was his whole idea.

And he and his brother enlisted together in the summer of 1862.

(music continues) Turns out he was part of one of the three most famous brigades in the civil war.

Wilder's Lightning Brigade of Mounted Infantry.

I wanted to plot out his footsteps in the civil war.

So I got out this 1862 map of civil war United States the summer of 1862.

That's when captain, his brother David enlisted together right here in Mount Carol, Illinois, just down the river from St. Paul.

And right next to Galena general Grant's hometown Cap and David went to Chicago and got on the train and had a east got off the train and marked south on foot got on the river boat and rode down the Ohio river on a boat, went by Fort Donaldson where general grant had just had his first major victory.

They both made it to Nashville, Tennessee, where David died of typhoid fever and cap nearly died.

He was in the hospital for three months, made it the Chattanooga and the battle at Chickamauga river of death where he was shot through the right shoulder.

Chickamauga is the bloodiest two day battle of the civil war with 35,000 casualties, in two days.

When he recovered from being shot through the right shoulder, he was shot to the left shoulder at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Then back on the horse, fighting all the way, made it to Savannah, Georgia by Christmas of 1864 had his last battle at Chapel Hill, North Carolina got on the train and headed home.

Got back home almost exactly three years to the day from when he volunteered to fighting the civil war.

(music continues) People absolutely love the museum, and we get about 1500 people here through the summer on the average.

And then we get another 500 or more on group tours and stragglers and tour buses and whatnot.

And we try and do a lot of school tours for the schools.

We've had 27 different school groups come through the museum so far, and I'd like every school in the area to send their kids here.

This is a great learning experience.

This is his diary and the song that they were singing in it there is "who will care for mother now".

(music continues) If you survived the civil war, it was because you were lucky.

(music continues) My great grandfather was mayor of battle lake and justice of the peace.

He was a public servant.

He started the first Baptist church in town and started the cemetery, probably was dog catcher and took care of everything else you can think of too.

It definitely is the history of my family, but I feel that it's representative of your family and other families in the area.

This is our history.

It's not my history (music continues) (music ends) Funded by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008 and by the members of Prairie Public.