“His oldest son, Enoch, was killed and scalped by Delaware Indians in 1806. It must have been awful for his mother, mustn’t it?”

“Yes, awful.”

“Of course she had a number of other children, including the one who became General Caine. He’s said to have killed quite a few Indians himself, when he was younger than I am now.” Duff took a large scrapbook from a stack of similar ones. “Here are some newspaper clippings about him. Aunt Hannah made some notes in the margins.”

He selected a page for me to read and pushed the book over. The clipping was from the Ashland Times of February 15, 1883. The heading was ashland county resident honored, and the two-­paragraph story stated that Brigadier General Duffin H. Caine had been proposed for membership in the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, an organization of former Union officers who had served with distinction during the war. Next to the clipping was a faded line written in a spidery hand. “He was a great man.” The verb was underlined several times.

“Why did she have to be so emphatic about it?” I asked. “Did somebody suggest he wasn’t a great man?”

“Well, you know, Dad told us about how some of his neighbors didn’t like him.” Duff turned the pages and showed me a clipping from May, 1862. I read part of it.

Colonel Caine took command of the Ohio Brigade on the second day at Shiloh after General Wilkinson was killed. Taking a position on the right flank of General Grant’s Army, he led his cavalrymen in charge after charge against Confederate General Wallace’s Division . . .

“He was made a general himself after that, and fought in several more battles before he was captured,” Duff said. “And even though he was captured in the western area of fighting, he was taken to an eastern prison—Libby Prison in Richmond—for greater security.”

“He must have been considered an important prisoner.”

“He was. He was one of the greatest cavalry leaders in the war, maybe the very greatest on the Union side. He was never recognized as such though by his contemporaries.”

“Why?”

“Oh, politics, I suppose. Maybe he wasn’t enough of a self-­promoter.” Duff took the scrapbook and put it back on the stack. “Anyway, you can see there’s a lot of valuable material here.”

“It’s transportable, isn’t it? We could rent a trailer and take all those books back East with us.”

“But it’s not only these books, Mother. It’s the books in the libraries in Ashland and Cainesville and all the microfilms of newspapers I need to read. Mother, couldn’t we please stay here for just one semester?”

“That gets us into January. That would be half the winter.”