hour before sundown we arrived at Camp Nelson and had come forty-one miles in that day. The officers asked me what I wanted there and I told them that I came there to fight the rebels and that I wanted a gun". Camp Nelson became the third largest recruiting and training center for African-American men: more than 10,000 men were recruited there. Unlike the all-white unit that guarded central Kentucky for the Union in 1863, the new army welcomed, initiated, trained, and commanded thousands of African American soldiers willing to fight the Confederates and, more immediately, to attain their freedom. Bruner served in western and central Kentucky, performing garrison duty. He was mustered out of the army in 1866 and went to Winchester, Kentucky, to visit his mother, whom he had not seen for 18 years, before moving to Ohio. Peter Bruner is listed on plaque B-26 at the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Marriage and children In 1866, he moved to Oxford, Ohio, where his aunt and uncle named the Brassfields lived. On March 10, 1868, he married Frances Proctor, the daughter of a free black farmer; they raised five children, including four daughters, together. He and his family were long-term members of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E. Church) in Oxford. Well liked in the community, he was appointed "Mayor for the Day" of Oxford, Ohio, in April 1938. Miami University Bruner worked as a custodian and messenger at Western Female Seminary, Oxford College, which merged into Miami University. He was the first African-American man to work at Miami University. He learned to read and write. In his autobiography he said that he went to school in Oxford and "studied reading, writing, geography and spelling, and have not got it yet". Bruner often served as ceremonial greeter at the university, wearing top hat and tails. His top hat is exhibited at the William H. McGuffey House Museum at Miami University. Several of his grandchildren and great grandchildren were able to graduate from Miami University, including Thomas Monroe Cheeks, Carrie Cheeks Morgan, Isabel Cheeks Lewis, Thomas Kelly, Margaret Greene McClain and James Cheeks. Many of his other descendants have graduated from other colleges. Autobiography With his daughter, Carrie Burns, he wrote an autobiography, A Slave's Adventures Toward Freedom; Not Fiction, but the True Story of a Struggle. Bruner states in the introduction: In this book