Diane Smith of Holden, Maine, author, CWRT member and Chamberlain House guide, visited us on September 9th at the Coffin School Cafeteria in Brunswick. to talk about her just published book Chamberlain at Petersburg: The Charge at Fort Hell - June 18, 1864.
We all know the bones of the Petersburg story but this book brings us the forgotten and unpublished Charge at Fort Hell written by Chamberlain. Smith uses her prodigious research skills to thoroughly annotate Chamberlain's narrative allowing the reader a complete understanding of the names and events mentioned. Those notes are an integral part of the book. You can expect the same quality of historical accuracy as we saw in her last book, Joshua and Fanny.
Diane Smith is a native of Maine. She received her degree in Human Developement, the study of human relationships from the University of Maine. She is a retired social worker currently working at the Bangor Public Library. Her responsibilities include setting up their lecture series "Meet the Author" series, concerts, etc. She is married to Robert E. (Ned) Smith and have two sons, Robert and Alex.
Our speaker, Diana Loski of Gettysburg, will talk to us about the second day of the battle of Gettysburg and in particular on the brigade of General George Greene on Culp's Hill. Gen. Greene, a graduate of West Point, 62 years old, was called "Old Pop" by the men he commanded. He defended the crest of the hill to the saddle at the lower part ending in the Spangler's Spring area. At twilight, Greene was attacked and the 137th, withdrew his right. General Greene, in his report of the battle says in part, "Colonel Ireland, commander of the 137th, withdrew his right, throwing back his line perpendicular to the intrenchments in which he had been in position and presenting his front to the enemy in their new position. The officers and men behaved admirably during the whole of the contest. Col. Ireland was attacked on his flank and rear. He changed his position and maintained his regiment suffering very severely."
Diana will compare Gen. Greene's experience at the far right of the Union line to Chamberlain's holding the far left.
Diana, a native of Ohio, has been interested in the Civil war since the age of five, when her grandfather told her the first of many stories concerning her eight ancestors who were Union soldiers.
A graduate of Brigham Young University, she is a former French and Spanish teacher in secondary schools, and the author of six books, including 1864, a novel of a soldier's year in the trenches, I am a Union Soldier, a children's book on the basics of regimental life, in 1988 The Chamberlains of Brewer and Gettysburg Experiences. These last two named books will be available at the meeting.
Diana currently serves as editor of The Gettysburg Experoence magazine and is a licensed battlefield guide at the Gettysburg National Military Park. She lives in Littletown, Pennsylvania with her husband, Leonard and their four children, Bill, Stephanie, Brett and Stacey.
Our speaker was Jay Schmidt, of Norton, Massachusetts who
gave a presentation on Fort Warren, a granite fort on an island in Boston Harbor which was built just in time for the Civil War. It became a prison for more than 2,200 Confederate military and political prisoners. He told stories of Civil War executions, escapes, the most famous political prisoners and recounted the famous legend of the fort's Ghost of the Lady in Black.
Jay is a direct descendant of a Union Soldier who served in the 5th Mass. Infantry. He is a Civil War Union reenactor and the president of the New England Department of the Council on America's Military Past (CAMP). He became interested in Fort Warren when he was about 12 years old and visited the fort while it was still federal property. He still remembers some of the old wooden buildings and the 3 foot tall grass on the parade ground. His book, Fort Warren: New England's Most Historic Civil War Site was published last summer. There will be copies of Jay's book available at the meeting.
Mr. Schmidt did have a "show and tell" table at the meeting, (research, books, artifacts, photos, etc.)
There was a very special raffle at our meeting. Courtesy of Margaret Pullen, we raffled off some papers, manuals, tapes, etc. which belonged to John Pullen.
Many visitors to Brunswick have made it a point to stop in at the Special Collections Department of the Bowdoin College Library to view Fanny Chamberlain's bracelet and the General's Medal of Honor but really don't know how they ended up there or that there is a vast amount of research materials on the Civil War available at this facility. Your president has spent time going through their files when I was doing research for John Pullen. It is truly a valuable. resource.
On Thursday, December 16th, 7:00 P.M., the CWRT meeting was held at the Special Collections Conference Room at the Bowdoin College Library. (entrance on College Street.) Dr. Richard Lindemann, Director of the department gave an illustrated presentation offering examples of Civil War research materials. Items were wide-ranging (although mainly Union resources) and largely reflect connections to Bowdoin (e.g. papers of Bowdoin alumni O.O. Howard and Joshus L. Chamberlain.) The presentation did include comments on how this material was acquired by the College.
Dr. Lindemann received his A.B. at the University of Georgia and PH.D. (medieval history) at the University of Virginia; Masters in Librarianship at Emory University. He served as editor of the Magazine of Albemarle County History (1986-1990) and has published works both in print and outline on a variety of topics related to Special Collections curatorship, ranging from the history of sciences to the Spanish Civil War to America's first novelist, Charles Brockden Brown. In the summer of 2002 he offered sessions on Civil War research as a part of Bowdoin Colleges' "Alumni College," which centered on the Civil War.
Our first speaker of the New Year will be Blaikie Hines of Thomaston, Maine. We will be back at our usual meeting place at the Brunswick Junior High School, Columbia Ave. on Thursday, January 13, 2005 at 7:00 p.m.
Mr. Hines will be wearing a Civil War uniform and in front of a huge period flag will deliver a presentation about the weapons, accoutrements and personal effects of a 1st Lt. in the Union Army of 1862. Although the talk is mainly concerned with a soldier who served from Connecticut, it is very general and can apply to any state.
After graduating from Mercerburg Academy (Pennsylvania) in 1968, Hines went to Ohio State University, first majoring in pre-veterinary medicine, then graduating with a major in agricultural economics. After college, he traveled around Europe with the intention of living there. Finding no work and language obstacles everywhere. Mr. Hines says "I finally went to London, where everybody speaks English." Returning to the states after five-and-half years, he began work at the Noroton Gallery in Darien where he became interested in the craft of art restoration and conservation eventually blossoming into a career. He now lives on an old farm property in Thomaston, Maine where he has his studio that looks out on to beautiful fields.
Twenty first century technology applied to nineteenth century records has uncovered many unknown facts about Connecticut’s involvement in America’s epic struggle. The chronicle of the Connecticut heroes and their regiments has long been recorded and unfortunately mostly forgotten. Hidden in the record was the account of the Connecticut towns and their contribution to the war. A story that has not been revealed until now in Mr. Hines reference book "Civil War Volunteer Sons of Connecticut." which will be available at the meeting.
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Peter Dalton is well known to our members having spoken before us in 1995 and 1999 but now he was to bring some of his fellow-members along from the Richardson’s CWRT to do this presentation on Thursday, February 10th at the Brunswick Junior High School at 7:00 p.m., which is based on their book Soldiers in Green. John Pullen wrote the introduction. Peter says "It concentrates on the life of James Mathews whose Civil War diary is its subject." Mathew’s was a member of Company D 2nd Sharpshooters. Matthews’ descriptions of his service and that of his regiment are vivid and lifelike and accurately depict the life of a civil war soldier. While many Civil War soldiers kept diaries or notes of their experiences, Mathews showed unusual persistence, getting two fellow soldiers from Rockland to write up short portions during Mathew’s absences from the field. After the war ended Mathews continued his diary for two years, moving out West to work and then returned to Maine, where he married a Belfast woman and settled in that town until his death in 1875.
Peter Dalton is a 1974 graduate of the University of Southern Maine with a major in Social Science. He presently works for MBNA in Belfast as a Computer Systems engineer. He has written or edited five books on Maine in the Civil War including "With Our Faces to the Foe: A History of the 4th Maine Infantry." He is married to Cyndi Dalton, who has written on the 16th Maine infantry.
We wanted you to get your thinking caps on and be ready to participate in our second Round Table discussion led by
Steven Bunker, CWRT member, author and historian. Last year 24 hardy souls braved bad weather for our discussion and were rewarded with a very interesting evening led by Charlie Plummer.
Steve did pose the following questions: Could the South have won the Civil War? Who in the Confederate command could have pulled it off? What events, civil and military, might have affected the outcome? What did prior historical events tell us? If they could have won, when was it most likely? If not, what deluded them into thinking they could be victorious?
If time permits, we could wind up with a review of our favorite (or least favorite) Mainers in the Rebellion. Steve says, "I've got some strange ones."
Steve Bunker has a longtime interest in historical preservation and interpretation. As a teenager in 1959, he was a principal founder of the Second Maine Cavalry. A living history unit organized for the then Civil War Centennial. This led to an interest in the role of the Maine Cavalry regiments during the War.
Over the years he worked in a variety of capacities on historic sites in Florida, Georgia and Marland. He is a former president of Friends of President Street Station in Baltimore. President Street Station was the site of Baltimore riot of April 19, 1861. Also, during his time in Maryland he was a founder and board member of the Baltimore Civil War Museum, former curator of Inner Harbor historic properties and exhibits for the city of Baltimore and a community activist and preservationsit in the waterfront community of Fells Point. Happily he now lives and has a business in Maine.
Kerck Kelsey of South Freeport was our guest speaker on Thursday, April 14th at the Brunswick Junior High School Cafeteria, Columbia Avenue, at 7:00 p.m.
Mr. Kelsey's subject is a man close to the Maine Civil War buffs heart but some of us knew very little about him beyond his governorship during the war and his relationship with Gen. Chamberlain.
Israel Washburn, Jr. was one of seven sons of Israel and Patty Washburn, all of whom distinguished themselves in various careers.
Kerck Kelsey's recent book, Israel Washburn, Jr, Maine's Little-Known Giant, relates the story of a man who became governor in 1861 virtually on the eve of the outbreak of the war. Sylvia Sherman, Director of the Archives Services Division, Maine State Archives, describes his plight as follows in her review of the book:
"the horrendous burden that then fell upon Governor Washburn as he began to place the state on a wartime footing, raise troops, acquire military supplies, and deal with all the emergency contingencies for which Maine was completely unprepared.
Mr. Kelsey describes his talk this way "A homely, self-taught Israel Washburn, Jr. helped found the Republican Party and bring it to national victory in just six years. As war governor, he also led Maine to the best record of troop raising of any northern state. My program did cover Governor Washburn's epic effort in leading Maine during the first two years of the war'
Mr. Kelsey is a historian and board member of the Washburn-Norlands History Center, and the great, great grandson of Maj. Gen. Cadwallader C. Washburn. He lives with his wife in South Freeport
On Thursday, June 9th we celebrated our Second Annual Awards Dinner at the Bounty Restaurant at the Holiday Inn, Bath at 6:00 p.m. Our guest speaker was Craig L.Symonds, noted author and professor of history at the United States Naval Academy. He is the author of nine books including biographies of Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston and Patrick Cleburne and Confederate admiral Franklin Buchanan. He will be speaking to us on Major General Patrick Cleburne.
Mr. Symonds describes his talk this way: "Patrick Cleburne is not only occasionally called the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the South he is usually known as the Stonewall of the West. His spectacular performances as a brigade and division
commander in the confederate Army of Tennessee at Stones River, Missionary Ridge, Ringgold Gap and elsewhere saved the Confederate army from destruction on more than one occasion." Mr. Symonds will discuss why this brilliant commander was never promoted above division command.
| Please Note: Our meeting will be held at the Curtis Memorial Library,Morrell Room on Pleasant Street, Brunswick at 7:00 P.M., September 8th. Parking Lot access is on Union Street and there is parking on Pleasant Street and the front entrance of the library. |
Throughout the Civil War, the Confederacy was forced to sustain its armies through the use of innovative steam-propelled blockade runners. While emphasizing the role of Wilmington, our speaker, Dr. Stephen R. Wise, who resides in Beaufort, South Carolina, at our meeting on Thursday, September 8th, 7:00 P.M. will provide an overview of the extensive supply system that allowed the Confederacy to wage a successful war effort, but it also provided the nation with a folklore that centered on daredevil captains, brave women and fearless crews.
Dr. Wise, an historian, is the director of the museum and the Cultural Resource Manager for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot located at Parris Island, S.C.
A native of Toledo, Ohio, Dr. Wise received his bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University . He was drawn to the University of South Carolina to study under the direction of the late Thomas L. Connelly, the noted Civil War historian, under whom Wise earned his doctoral degree. His first book, "Lifeline of the Confederacy:Blockade Running during the Civil War" was highly acclaimed and his second book, "The Campaign for Charleston Harbor 1863," received an award from the South Carolina Historical Society as the best book written in 1994 on South Carolina history.
The Chamberlain CWRT met on Thursday, October 20th at the Brunswick Junior High School Cafeteria at 7:00 p.m. Our speaker was Michael Schellhammer of Arlington, Virginia.
Mr. Schellhammer uses as a basis for his talk his 2003 book "The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers in the Civil War," examining some often overlooked difficulties that volunteer leaders faced in the Civil War. He also applies his own experiences as an Army Officer.
Throughout the discussion our speaker did examine how well the average Union Civil War regiment might have compared to the modern Army standard of good leadership, known as "Be, Know, Do," or, the ability of leaders to master their skills, apply them effectively, and make critical decisions at the right points.
Mr. Schellhammer is an intelligence specialist with the Department of Defense with 20 years of service in the Regular Army and Army Reserve as an officer of infantry, military intelligence, and civil affairs. He served throughout the United States, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf War, in Haiti during the 1994 intervention and in Bosnia with the 1st United Kingdom Armored Division in 1996. In 2003 he served in Iraq as a Combat Historian with the 5th Special Forces Group. He was born in Erie, Pennsylvania where the 83rd Pennsylvania Regiment was raised.
Copies of Mr. Schellhammer’s book signed by the author were available at the meeting .
Arthur Schade, (CWRT member), along with two of his fellow members of the Falmouth American Legion Post 164 did present a flag ceremony in honor of National Patriots Day which commemorates the events of September 11, 2001.
Curtis A. Mildner has transcribed the Civil War era letters from George L. Berry and has added his own historical notes to create an
interesting narrative. We learned how his interest in his subject got started, how and where he researched, the day to day experiences of George Berry, Fifth Maine, and what he has learned.
Mr. Mildner’s book is dedicated to his son Ben, "who rekindled my interest in the Civil War by playing and replaying the video 'Gettysburg' over and over, hundreds of times."
Mildner resides in Kennebunk and runs his own research business called Market Decisions in Portland.
You may recall that Peter Dalton and some of his fellow members of the Richardson CWRT in Rockland were snowed out last February. We are hoping for better things on December 8th at the Brunswick Junior High School, Columbia Ave., at 7:00 P.M. when they are scheduled to return.
Their subject will be the Civil War diaries of James Mathews, a member of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters.
Peter tells us that Mathews' descriptions of his service and that of his regiment are vivid and lifelike and accurately depicts the life of a civil war soldier. He adds "While many Civil War soldiers kept diaries or notes of their experiences, Mathews showed
unusual persistence, getting two fellow soldiers from Rockland to write up short portions during his absences from the field."
Peter Dalton is a 1974 graduate of USM with a major in Social Science. He has written or edited five books on Maine in the Civil War, including "With Our Faces to the Foe, A History of the 4th Maine Infantry." He is married to Cyndi Dalton who has written on the 16th Maine infantry.
We celebrated the beginning of our 20th year with a visit from Robert Greene of South Portland who enlightened us on the number of African Americans who fought in the Civil War - not only in the famed 54th Massachusetts - but a number of black men from Maine.
Greene says, "Maine is usually called the "whitest state in the nation." Yet there have been African-Americans living in the state since the 17th Century, and proportionally there probably were more blacks in Maine in 1850 than any other time since black Mainers joined the cause and fought in the War of the Revolution. Therefore it should be no surprise that in the battle between the states, a number of black men from Maine fought - and died - for the Union. While one black Mainer was in the famed 54th Massachusetts Colored Troops, others fought with the Pennsylvania Colored Troops. And there were even a few who saw battle with their white comrades from Maine".
Robert Greene, is at least an eighth-generation Maineac - what we called ourselves before those from "away" decided Mainers was a more politically-correct term. He has been able to trace his family back to 1783, all in Cumberland County. He grew up on Portland's Munjoy Hill and graduated from Portland High before joining the rest of our young people and leaving the state for college, first at Virginia State, a predominantly black school, then at the University of Kansas where he majored in journalism. After a 36-year career with the Associated Press, the last 25 years as a sports writer, he retired back to his native Maine and now lives in South Portland. Although retired from the Associated Press, Bob still writes about tennis and travels the world. In fact, he was in Shanghai, China for a tennis tournament in November. Besides traveling Bob has really been able to scratch that genealogical itch now that he doesn't have to waste so much time at something so mundane as a job.
At this meeting we also drew the winning ticket in the raffle for the Wendy Allen painting of Abraham Lincoln, and the winner was Curtis A. Mildner.
The Joshua L. Chamberlain Civil War Round Table did welcome a return visit from Jim Nelson of Harpswell on February 9, 2006 at it's meeting at the Brunswick Junior High School, Columbia Avenue at 7:00 p.m. The title of his presentation was "River Defense: The Wild and Wooly Fight for the Mississippi." This program explored the most furious naval combat of the Civil War in the summer of 1862 between the Confederate River Defense Fleet and the Union's Ellet Rams when the Confederate army assembled a fleet of river boats under the command of undisciplined and unruly boat captains to fight off the Union pushing up and down the Mississippi.
Nelson last spoke to the group on his book "Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Ironclads" in February of 2004. His writing covers a wide range of America's maritime heritage from piracy in Colonial Virginia to the naval action of the Civil War. "Glory in the Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy," was published in 2003 and won the American Library Association's William Y. Boyd Award for excellence in military fiction. Nelson is no stranger to the sea having served on the crews of the Golden Hinde, a replica of Sir Francis Drake's vessel of 1577 and the brig Lady Washington and the ship HMS Rose.
On Thursday, March 9th, the Chamberlain Civil War Round Table we welcomed Earle Shettleworth, Jr. the Director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, who spoke on Civil War Monuments of Maine.
Mr. Shettleworth gave a slide presentation on the monuments erected by Maine communities dedicated to those who fought to preserve the Union. He described them as whether simple granite columns or elaborate bronze sculptures, these eloquent reminders of the Civil War grace public spaces across our state. This lecture was illustrated by period photographs and post cards.
Shettleworth is a well-known and respected historian for the State of Maine. He is a native of Portland and attended Deering High School, Colby College and Boston University. At the age of twelve he became interested in historic preservation through the destruction of Portland's Union Station in 1961. Through his older sister he met Elizabeth Ring who was the VP of the Maine Historical Society and for 25 years was the chairman of the history and government department at Deering High. (Ken McAfee tells us she was his history teacher when he was a student at Deering.) Through Ms. Ring, Shettleworth became a member of the Society at age thirteen and the rest is history. In 1971 he was appointed by Governor Curtis to serve on the first board of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, for which he became architectural historian in 1973 and director in 1976. In March 2004 Governor Baldacci appointed Mr. Shettleworth as State Historian.
Because the Seven Days battles outside Richmond in June and July 1862 involved so much rapid movement and so many days of consecutive fighting, many Civil War enthusiasts have shied away from investigating that bloody week. In the space of just five and a half days, the armies - led by George B. McClellan and R. E. Lee - amassed 35,000 casualties and moved dozens of wearying miles. When they were done, the war in the East had been turned on its ear. In this overview talk, Krick hopes to peel away some of the mystery by emphasizing the basics, such as geography, strategy and leadership. An investigation of those subjects in the context of the Seven Days battles can help to make sense of that confusing chain of battles.
Robert Krick has lived or worked on Civil War battlefields almost continuously since 1972. He grew up on the Chancellorsville battlefield and graduated from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg with a degree in history. He has worked in various historical capacities at several battlefields, including Custer Battlefield in Montana. Since 1991 Krick has been a historian on the Richmond National Battlefield Park. He is widely published on Confederate topics. His first book was a unit history "The Fortieth Virginia Infantry" and he is now working on a study of the Battle of Gaines Mills.
For a long time we have been hearing about revisionism especially as it pertains to history. To some it is almost a dirty word, to others it is a common sense approach to accepting the fact that "maybe it didn’t happen that way." With the advent of the spate of diaries and letters coming to light written at the time of the Civil War along with the prodigious research being carried on many versions of battles and events are being questioned and/or proven to be true.
Talk about revisionism -just within the last few weeks the news of the uncovering of the Gospel of Judas has rocked the world. His very name has been synonymous with betrayal and treachery. Is it authentic? Who knows.
Only time will tell.
On Thursday, May 11th at the Brunswick Junior High School we were treated to a panel discussion by three historian/writers who entered into a dialogue about their feelings on this subject. I wasn't surprised that there mwere some differences of opinion.
Our panelists are writers/historians Tom Desjardin, William Marvel and Steve Bunker, all well-known by our members. Tom, the author of "Stand Firm Ye Boys of Maine," "These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory," and his latest book "Through a Howling Wilderrness: Benedict Arnold’s March to Quebec, 1775" is out and available. Tom is the historian for the Maine Department of Conservation and is currently teaching a course on Civil War History at Bowdoin College.
William Marvel is an independent scholar from South Conway, NH and the author of a dozen books about the Civil War. His latest book, "Mr. Lincoln Goes to War," will be released on May 10th.
Steve Bunker has a longtime interest in historical preservation and interpretation. As a teenager in 1959 he was a principal founder of the Second Maine Cavalry, a living history unit organized for the then Civil War Centennial. This led to an interest in the role of the Maine Cavalry regiments during the War. Over the years Steve has worked in a variety of capacities on historic sites. He now lives and has a business in Maine.
It was an interesting experience.
Patrick A. Schroeder, Historian at Appomattox Court House National Park, did reveal the real facts behind Chamberlain's role at Appomattox and the stacking of arms ceremony. He states, "This is based on new primary source information found by the speaker, not conjecture."
Our speaker was born at Fort Belvoir, VA and was raised in Utica, New York. In the spring of 1990 he graduated Cum Laude with a BS in Historical Park Administration from Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, WV. He has a M.A. in Civil War History from Virginia Tech. His first book published in 1993 "Thirty Myths About Lee's Surrender" in its tenth printing in addition to seventeen other titles. Patrick and his wife, Maria live in Lynchburg, VA where they run a small publishing company.