When: July 10th

Where: La Navona, 154 North Hamilton Road. Gahanna Ohio 43230

Time: 7pm

Speaker:  Dr. Jennifer M. Murray

Topic: “‘On A Great Battlefield’: The History of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1863-2016

 

“‘On A Great Battlefield’: The History of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1863-2016” explores the 150 year history of the Gettysburg battlefield. Over 6,000 books and articles have been written on the three-day battle, but historians have devoted minimal attention to the history of the landscape itself and the complicated, divisive, and controversial nature of preserving, interpreting, and commemorating America’s most hallowed ground. Ultimately the Gettysburg landscape is significant beyond the events of July 1-3, 1863. Dr. Murray’s program explores the first preservation and commemorative efforts of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association and the U.S War Department, with a particular focus on the National Park Service administration.

The National Park Service acquired the battlefield in 1933 and the ensuing eight-decades highlights the complicated nexus between preservation, tourism, popular culture, interpretation, commemoration, and memory. The Park Service’s management of the battlefield occurs not in a vacuum, but within a larger realm of political, social, and academic trends. Decisions made by park officials simultaneously influence the interpretive story at Gettysburg, the narrative presented to thousands of park visitors, and shape more broadly the Gettysburg experience. The history of the Gettysburg battlefield from 1933 to the present underscores the complicated relationship between race and reunion, public and private interests, between preservation theories and utilitarian uses, between the National Park Service and the American people, and between fact and fiction.

Dr. Jennifer M. Murray is a military historian, with a specialization in the American Civil War, in the Department of History at Oklahoma State University. Murray’s most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014. Murray is also the author of The Civil War Begins, published by the U.S. Army’s Center of Military History in 2012. She is currently working on a full-length biography of George Gordon Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War. Murray is a veteran faculty member at Gettysburg College’s Civil War Institute and a coveted speaker at Civil War symposiums and roundtables. In addition, Murray worked as a seasonal interpretive park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine summers (2002-2010).

July Presidents Message

 

When:  June 12th

Where:    La Navona, 154 North Hamilton Road. Gahanna Ohio 43230

Time:   7pm

Speaker: Gary Dyson

Topic:   “A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans”

“A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans” explores the eyewitness account of Boston Journal War Correspondent Albert Gaius Hills from the day he left Boston Harbor in November 1861 through the New Orleans Campaign of 1862. Hills recorded his observations while with the Union fleet in the Gulf of Mexico and on Ship Island as well as his account of the bombardments of Forts Jackson and St. Philip and impression of captured New Orleans.  Hills’ life and his relationships with other correspondents are also part of the presentation.

Gary L. Dyson is a retired Environmental Specialist from the city of Gaithersburg, MD and a former Marine. He is a lifelong history enthusiast and has spent countless hours reading, researching and exploring battlefields – from the French and Indian War to World War II. Gary owns Dyson Genealogy and Historical Research and is the author of “Ambush of the Isaac P. Smith” and “A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans, the Journals and Reports of Albert Gaius Hills of the Boston Journal.” He has a BS in Natural Resources Management from Oregon State University. Gary lives in Mount Airy, MD with his wife Emily and has two children away at college. He is also a board member for the Frederick County Civil War Round Table in Maryland.

Presidents Message

A Civil War Correspondent in New Orleans

When:   May 8th

Where:  La Navona, 154 North Hamilton Road. Gahanna Ohio 43230

Time:      7pm

Speaker:  Michael K. Shaffer

Topic:       “In Memory of Self and Comrades: Thomas Wallace Colley’s Recollection of Civil War Service in the 1st Virginia Cavalry.”

Thomas W. Colley served in one of the most active and famous units in the Civil War, the 1st Virginia Cavalry, which fought in battles in the Eastern Theater, from First Manassas/Bull Run to the defense of Petersburg. Colley was born November 11, 1837, outside Abingdon, Virginia, and grew up knowing the daily demands of life on a farm. In May 1861, along with the other members of the Washington Mounted Rifles, he left his home in Washington County and reported to camp in Richmond. During the war, Colley received wounds on three different occasions: first at Waterloo Bridge in 1862, again at Kelly’s Ford in 1863, and finally at Haw’s Shop in 1864. The engagement at Haw’s Shop resulted in the amputation of his left foot, thereby ending his wartime service.

The first modern scholarly edition of Colley’s writings, In Memory of Self and Comrades dramatizes Colley’s fate as a wounded soldier mustered out before the war’s conclusion. Colley’s postwar reflections on the war reveal his struggle to earn a living and maintain his integrity while remaining somewhat unreconciled to his condition. He found much of his solace through writing and sought to advance his education after the war. As one of an estimated 20,000 soldiers who underwent amputation during the Civil War, his memoirs reveal the challenges of living with what many might recognize today as post-traumatic stress disorder. Annotations from editor Michael K. Shaffer provide further context to Colley’s colorful and insightful writings on both his own condition and the condition of other veterans also dealing with amputations.

A Civil War historian, author, newspaper columnist, instructor,
and battlefield guide, Shaffer remains a member of the Society of Civil War
Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, Georgia
Association of Historians, and Georgia Writers Association. He serves as
president of the Friends of Camp McDonald, and on the board of the Cobb
County Civil War Round Table. Shaffer holds BA and MA degrees, with
honors, in Military History – Civil War Studies. He frequently lectures to
various groups, and currently teaches Civil War courses at Kennesaw State
University’s College of Continuing and Professional Education, and at
Emory University

Civil War Historian

Presidents Message  

Lee’s March to Gettysburg

 

 

When:    April 10th

Where:  Motts Military Museum. 5075 South Hamilton Road. Grovrport Ohio

Time:     7pm

Speaker:   Dan Welch

Topic:   How did They Get Here: The Gettysburg Campaign

Follow the Union and Confederate armies northward across Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania during the weeks leading up to the battle of Gettysburg and examine the many battles and events that impacted both before the first shot of July 1, 1863.

Dan Welch currently serves as a primary and secondary educator with a public school district in northeast Ohio. Previously, Dan was the Education Programs Coordinator for the Gettysburg Foundation, the non-profit partner of Gettysburg National Military Park, and continues to serve as a seasonal Park Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park. Welch received his BA in Instrumental Music Education from Youngstown State University and a MA in Military History with a Civil War Era concentration at American Military University. Welch has also studied under the tutelage of Dr. Allen C. Guelzo as part of the Gettysburg Semester at Gettysburg College. His first book, The Last Road North: A Guide to the Gettysburg Campaign, 1863, was released as part of the Emerging Civil War Series in June 2016. He currently resides with his wife, Sarah, in Boardman, Ohio.

Order The Last Road North

April Presidents Message

When: March 13th

Where:  La Navona, 154 North Hamilton Road. Gahanna Ohio 43230

Time: 7pm

Speaker:  Frank A. O’Reilly, Lead Historian: Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National                         Military Park

Topic:   “A Fierce and Deadly Contest” William Barksdale and the Battle of                                            Fredericksburg

Long before the Union army ever assailed Marye’s Heights or its terrible Stone Wall, Robert E. Lee knew he had won the Battle of Fredericksburg.  On December 11, 1862, a maverick officer from Mississippi, William Barksdale ruined the Union plans for battle, setting the stage for Lee’s most resounding victory.  Barksdale rewrote the book on defensive warfare, introducing Americans to the experience of city-wide bombardments, riverine assaults under fire, and the first urban combat in North America.  When Barksdale was done, James Longstreet said the battle was won right there.  We will look at William Barksdale and his Mississippians where their innovations changed the rules of warfare and set the stage for how modern armies would fight.

 

Frank A. O’Reilly received both his BA and MA in American History with a concentration

Frank O’Reilly on the Field of Fredericksburg

in Early American Military History and Civil War Studies. After graduating from

Washington & Lee University in 1987, he joined the National Park Service at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Later he worked with the Park Service at Independence Hall in Philadelphia before returning to Fredericksburg in 1990 as the park’s permanent historian. He has also served as an historical consultant for the City of Fredericksburg.

O’Reilly, who has lectured extensively on military history to audiences around the world, has written numerous articles on the Civil War and Mexican War and has appeared on CSPAN and in several video documentaries. He is the author of Stonewall Jackson at Fredericksburg and The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock which garnered a number of awards including a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Letters.

Presidents Message