Jay Johnson is the great-grandson of “Cap” Colehour, the man who started the Prospect Inn. The house is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Prospect House is an 18-room house built in 1882 by my great-grandfather, James A. “Cap” Colehour. It was the first resort in Battle Lake.

My grandparents remodeled the original Inn after the Georgian architectural style of our ancestral home in Deerfield, Massachusetts. They were of some means and filled the house with fine rugs, furniture, glassware, china, artwork, books, collections, toys, and, of course, all the modern conveniences of the day.

The family fortune was lost during the crash of 1929, however—they rarely purchased anything after that.

As they had everything they needed, the circumstance didn’t bring on the hardship one might expect. The family was small, the house large, and the Depression rooted in their minds, so they were able to preserve their home and belongings.

During the winter of 2002-2003, my mother – Kay Wilkins Johnson – began to decline mentally and physically. I found it necessary to move into the house with her to care for her. That was the beginning of discovery.

In idle moments, I explored the big, old house. My searches were rewarded. My great-grandfather was a Civil War Veteran, in fact, the oldest living Civil War veteran in this area when he died. I found a chest filled with nearly 200 Civil War letters, a fife, buttons from a uniform, a powder flask, two diaries, typhoid serum, Lincoln-Johnson campaign posters, and a flag and battlefield souvenirs.

The Civil War collection here is not about the Battle of Gettysburg or the Battle of Lexington or other battles in which Cap was not engaged. The collection is about Cap Colehour and his part in the Civil War. When Cap was at Chickamauga – the bloodiest two-day battle of the war, with 35,000 casualties – he was shot. He believed at that time he would not survive the war, and he began writing more letters, saving more of what he found around him, and sending things back home so people would know his story.

In the end, he lived to the age of 96 years. The letters he sent home, the clothing, diaries and war-related belongings he brought home, and the artifacts he collected after the Civil War, tell his story – a uniquely personal story.