William T. Martin belonged to a farm family from Pickens District, South Carolina. At the time of the 1860 Federal Census, his father Oliver Martin (b. 1817) was a widower with with five children in his household. Their mother had died on November 13, 1867. The oldest son William T. Martin (b. ca. 1842) served as a private in Co. F, 1st Regiment, Orr’s Rifles, South Carolina Volunteers. William's regiment was in the Charleston area from the Fall of 1861 to May 1862, when it was transferred to Richmond, Virginia. His regiment helped build the gunboat Palmetto State. In Virginia, William engaged in the Seven Day's Battles (July 1862) before he became ill and died of “camp fever” in a Richmond hospital on August 5, 1862. The majority of letters in this collection were written by William T. Martin to his father and family back home, including sisters Mary E. (b. 1844), Elizabeth Jane (b. 1846), Anna (b. 1849), and John F. Martin (b. 1855). There are also letters written by Oliver Martin and other family members to William, as well as letters by soldiers serving with William. Oliver Martin apparently remarried in the early part of the war (c. 1860-1861), and his new wife was named Elizabeth. Oliver himself was in service in Barnett's 2nd Battalion of the South Carolina Reserves in January 1864.