The Crossman papers are comprised of 95 letters and 4 tax documents.
The Correspondence series contains approximately 60 letters from Ferdinand while he was in the army, from 1862-1864. In his letters, Ferdinand inquired about Adelaide's day-to-day activities, and described his own in the army. Many letters mentioned their children, though not by name. He wrote about army life, fighting, military duties, pay, food, clothes, health, and personal news. In a letter dated May 15, 1863, Ferdinand refuted inaccurate news from Adelaide that the Union Army had taken Richmond. In one of his final letters, that of April 18, 1864, Crossman wrote that he sensed a major battle brewing and predicted that he might not make it home again, and that Adelaide should do her best to get on with her life, if he should die. Crossman would die of disease on August 9, 1864, at the Andersonville, Georgia, prison.
The rest of the letters are to Adelaide from her sister and friends. These concern daily life in Massachusetts, as well as family and personal news such as marriage, children, health, and death.
The Receipts and Tax Document series contains a 1859 tax record and three receipts for subscriptions to the True Flag weekly newspaper.
Ferdinand Joseph Fuller Crossman, son of Martin Luther and Experience Robbins Crossman, was born in 1834 and raised by his paternal grandfather in Sutton, Massachusetts. He enlisted at Cambridge in the First Company of Sharpshooters, known as the "Andrew Sharpshooters," which was attached to the 15th Massachusetts Infantry in August 1862. He didn't see action until the first battle at Fredericksburg in the winter of 1862. He was wounded at the second battle at Fredericksburg in the spring of 1863, when one of his fingers was shattered by a bullet. He narrowly escaped serious injury at Gettysburg, but his health quickly deteriorated from exhaustion and exposure; he was hospitalized, first at Harper's Ferry, and later at the Armory Hospital in Washington, D.C. He re-joined the army at the Battle of the Wilderness (May 3-7, 1864), and was captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. He died of disease on August 9, 1864, at the Andersonville, Georgia, prison.
Adelaide Isham Crossman was born to Franklin H. and Rebecca Isham on March 17, 1837, in Massachusetts. She lived in St. George, Vermont, and moved to Whitinsville, Massachusetts, in 1855, after marrying Ferdinand Crossman. After Ferdinand's death, Adelaide married Frederick Phineas Burr, another Union soldier, in 1866; they had one daughter, Ida R., in 1870.