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

 

 

Tonights meeting is at:
Motts Military Museum.  5075 South Hamilton Road. Groveport Ohio.

Do not go to the usual meeting place. No one will be there.

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

When:   February 13th

Time:    7pm

Speaker:  Dan Masters

Topic:       21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Stones River

The 21st Ohio Infantry underwent its first serious taste of battle at the Battle of Stones River on December 31, 1862. The regiment really encompasses the general experience of the Army of the Cumberland at Stones River: driven back on December 31st with heavy losses, the regiment redeemed its fortunes in a desperate charge across Stones River on January 2nd. This talk will feature first hand accounts from a number of men in the regiment and explain how their actions in the cedars on December 31st proved crucial to saving the Federal center, and how their famous charge on January 2, 1863 helped break the back of Braxton Bragg’s army and secure victory for the Union. 

I’m 43, married, with 6 children; and work as a supply chain and planning manager for Materion Corp. in Elmore, Ohio. Education: a 1994 graduate of Bowsher High School in Toledo, and a 2002 graduate of the University of Toledo with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Pursuing a masters’ degree in American History at Bowling Green State University. 

My real passion however is history, specifically military history with a focus on Ohio Civil War history, and local military history in general. I have published five books thus far, four of them on the different aspects of the Civil War, and have had 11 articles published (mostly Civil War related) including one in Maryland and one in Tennessee. Sherman’s Praetorian Guard (published in 2017) was awarded the Center for Archival Collection’s Local History Publication Award in 2018. 

I’ve also put together several historical videos, including one about a B-36 crash that took place in 1951 that has received over 200,000 views since I posted it to YouTube in 2014. 

As far as scholarly work, I constructed two major newspaper correspondence indexes for the Center for Archival Collections at BGSU- one indexes all of the Civil War-era newspapers from northwestern Ohio counties. The second index includes all of the WWI-era newspapers in Wood County. A complete resume (with links to the videos and several of the articles) can be found on my LinkedIn page:         

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-masters-99668855/        

I own and operate Columbian Arsenal Press, a small publishing firm that focuses on putting into print first hand narratives of the Civil War from Ohio soldiers. Our website is here:  www.columbianarsenal.com      

I also have a research blog that I post things to on occasion which can be accessed here:  http://dan-masters-civil-war.blogspot.com/     

This year I will be publishing at least two books: Army Life According to Arbaw which features the Civil War experiences of William A. Brand of the 66th OVI and the Seneachie Letters which presents a collection of letters from William Mosby McLain of the 32nd OVI. Arbaw should be out in March, Seneachie by the summertime. Long term project is a collaboration with Larry Strayer on a three volume project with a tentative title of Echoes of Battle which features nearly 300 accounts from Ohioans throughout the Civil War: from Philippi to Appomattox and hundreds of points in between. 

February Presidents Message

When:   February 13th

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

Time:    7pm

Speaker:  Dan Masters

Topic:       21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Stones River

The 21st Ohio Infantry underwent its first serious taste of battle at the Battle of Stones River on December 31, 1862. The regiment really encompasses the general experience of the Army of the Cumberland at Stones River: driven back on December 31st with heavy losses, the regiment redeemed its fortunes in a desperate charge across Stones River on January 2nd. This talk will feature first hand accounts from a number of men in the regiment and explain how their actions in the cedars on December 31st proved crucial to saving the Federal center, and how their famous charge on January 2, 1863 helped break the back of Braxton Bragg’s army and secure victory for the Union. 

I’m 43, married, with 6 children; and work as a supply chain and planning manager for Materion Corp. in Elmore, Ohio. Education: a 1994 graduate of Bowsher High School in Toledo, and a 2002 graduate of the University of Toledo with a bachelor’s degree in communications. Pursuing a masters’ degree in American History at Bowling Green State University. 

My real passion however is history, specifically military history with a focus on Ohio Civil War history, and local military history in general. I have published five books thus far, four of them on the different aspects of the Civil War, and have had 11 articles published (mostly Civil War related) including one in Maryland and one in Tennessee. Sherman’s Praetorian Guard (published in 2017) was awarded the Center for Archival Collection’s Local History Publication Award in 2018. 

I’ve also put together several historical videos, including one about a B-36 crash that took place in 1951 that has received over 200,000 views since I posted it to YouTube in 2014. 

As far as scholarly work, I constructed two major newspaper correspondence indexes for the Center for Archival Collections at BGSU- one indexes all of the Civil War-era newspapers from northwestern Ohio counties. The second index includes all of the WWI-era newspapers in Wood County. A complete resume (with links to the videos and several of the articles) can be found on my LinkedIn page:         

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-masters-99668855/        

I own and operate Columbian Arsenal Press, a small publishing firm that focuses on putting into print first hand narratives of the Civil War from Ohio soldiers. Our website is here:  www.columbianarsenal.com      

I also have a research blog that I post things to on occasion which can be accessed here:  http://dan-masters-civil-war.blogspot.com/     

This year I will be publishing at least two books: Army Life According to Arbaw which features the Civil War experiences of William A. Brand of the 66th OVI and the Seneachie Letters which presents a collection of letters from William Mosby McLain of the 32nd OVI. Arbaw should be out in March, Seneachie by the summertime. Long term project is a collaboration with Larry Strayer on a three volume project with a tentative title of Echoes of Battle which features nearly 300 accounts from Ohioans throughout the Civil War: from Philippi to Appomattox and hundreds of points in between. 

February Presidents Message

When:  January 9th

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

Time:   7pm

Speaker:  You!     Annual Roundtable group discussion

Topic:   “The Changing Historical Perspective on George McClellan.”

Please come to the meeting ready to listen to some of the recent reappraisal’s of Little Mac’s generalship and to argue whether these perspectives have any validity.  Mike Peters will be making a presentation on the history of scholarship on McClellan, and then Tim Maurice will discuss his personal experience on his attitude toward McClellan and the effect of recent scholarship on his views. I will moderate the discussion but also give some insight into  why I feel that many of the histories written from 1940 to 2010 treated McClellan incorrectly.

Major General George McClellan and Mrs. McClellan

Presidents Message

The Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District