One night, surrounded by the odd glow created by shop lights beaming through clouds of plaster dust, Stanley Teprovich and his son Marc dislodged a water-stained, much-folded scrap of paper from a staircase wall. They were removing plaster as part of remodeling work on a farmhouse Mark had purchased about a year before on Fairview Street, Rush Township.

The faded handwriting was difficult to read. They would take it to a neighbor, Cathey Schimpf, who would enhance the letter using a scanner. It was a letter written by a Civil War soldier named Daniel Brause, written home to his wife, Leyanda.Schimpf, who has studied the Civil War and visited many battlefields with her late husband, Bruce, couldn't help but be curious. She delved into old records using the Internet, books and maps. Who were they? And what happened to them?Personal accountIt wasn't long before Leyanda Brause, 26, knew the words of the letter from her husband, Daniel, by heart."Camping Near Washington, June 21st, 1865," read the first line. "Dear wife, I received your kind and welcome letter with great joy finding yours all well at home."Leyanda, born in 1839, was one of six children born to Samuel and Hannah (Klingemann) Everett. Daniel, born in 1842, was the son of Johannes Brause and Catherine Gebhard; his parents are buried in the Hauck Cemetery, alongside the Hinkle Road, a dirt road which runs behind Air Products. Daniel had three brothers, Nathan, George and Charles, and four sisters, Maria, Anna, Rachel (who married a Hauck) and Leah.According to Census records, in 1860 Leyanda was 21 and worked as a servant in the household of George Reagan, who was retired. He had been the postmaster of Tamaqua. Daniel was 18 with the occupation of "laborer" and had assets totaling $2,500.After the Civil War launched with the firing on Fort Sumter, he volunteered and served as a private with Scott Rifles (10th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry, Company C), of Tamaqua, for three months. The regiment was organized at Camp Curtin, Harrisburg, April 26, 1861, and mustered out July 31, 1861.In October 1862, he bought a farm located at what's now 153 Fairview St. in Barnesville (currently owned by Marc Teprovich). Daniel Brause purchased the farm from Ellen Brause, who was the widow of his brother Charles. Charles is also buried in the Hauck Cemetery.Daniel's brother Nathan served as a private in the 173rd Regiment Co. A.Nathan survived the Civil War and is buried in the Bethany Methodist Church Cemetery on Holly Road in Barnesville. Daniel's brother George was drafted to serve in the Union Army in September 1863 (there were 3,334 men drafted from Schuylkill County).At the time, George had five children; Daniel opted to serve as a substitute for George. In place of his brother George, Daniel served in the 88th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers Company H.He and Leyanda married Jan. 15, 1865, in Mahanoy City. He mustered into the 88th on March 31, 1865, and mustered out June 30, 1865 just nine days after sending the letter home to Leyanda.According to the History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-65, the 88th went into camp near Hatcher's Run and remained there until March 29, when it joined in active operations, "being hotly engaged." From the end of March until April 9, the 88th was attached to the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division, 5th Army Corps in the Appomattox Campaign, in pursuit of Robert E. Lee and his army.The 88th was present at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, for Lee's surrender, and then moved to Washington, D.C. The 88th participated in the Grand Review May 23, and mustered out June 30, 1865. As a private in the Union Army, Daniel would have been paid $13 per month."I can tell you that the yellow jaundice left me a week ago and I am perfectly well again," Daniel wrote home in the letter to Leyanda. "You had stated in your letter that you wish I was home dear wife, today I am three months in service and don't expect to stay another more."Ancestry tracedIn the 1870 Census, Daniel and Leyanda have two children, Abraham, 5, and Catharine, 2.Daniel lists his occupation as "Innkeeper" and Leyanda's as "keeping house."In 1870, Daniel's brother George, wife Catherine (Linder) and their children moved west to Iowa, where George died Dec. 2, 1897.In the 1900 Census, Catherine, listed as widowed and the mother of 11 children, is living in Marion, Iowa. In Iowa, the Brause family started a maple sugar operation, listed in a 1929 Iowa Record newspaper article as "one of the show places of that locality for almost 60."But what had happened to Daniel and his family? After the 1870 Census, there were no more records, no census records and no burial records. Through the use of a message board on the website

www.ancestry.com, the surviving Brauses in Iowa were contacted.Presumably, Daniel and his family were trying to join his beloved brother George in Iowa. They almost made it.The response via the Ancestry message board was short, "Daniel and his family were killed in a steamboat accident while crossing the Mississippi River."But for some reason, their youngest child Catharine was not with them. Did they consider her too young for the long journey? It could be that only the walls of the farmhouse on Fairview Street know the answer to that mystery.In February 1894, Catharine Brause of Lakeside married Samuel Depew of Delano at the home of the bride's uncle, Augustus Roth in Lakeside.According to the newspaper report, "the marriage was quiet, with only a few intimate friends being present. The happy couple went to Reading the same evening, and after a trip to Niagara Falls will take up their residence in Delano."In February 2015, Marc Teprovich inexplicably got the urge to tap the maple trees that surround his old farmhouse on Fairview Road. Although he'd never before tried it, he collected the sap and cooked it into syrup over an open fire. The trees are enormous in girth; although no one can prove it so, it's nice to think Daniel and Leyanda may have made syrup from them about 150 years ago.