Voices From the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War - Paperback

by Carleton Young (Author)

Imagine clearing out your family attic and discovering hundreds of letters written during the Civil War. Faced with that situation, and not knowing why his family had the letters, the author uses the resources of Ancestry.com and other sources to discover how two Vermont soldiers fit into his family heritage. Using excerpts from their letters, which are filled with in-depth accounts of battles and army life, he weaves together their dramatic war-time narrative into the context of the war and adds in additional information about the friends and relatives who fought by their side. Voices From the Attic is the story of two brothers who witnessed and helped to make history by fighting in the Peninsula Campaign, then at South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Cedar Creek. They preserved that history through their surprisingly detailed and insightful letters. Now rediscovered after one and a half centuries, their letters offer a valuable source of information as seen through the eyes of two soldiers as they fought in America's great Civil War.

Author Biography

CARLETON YOUNG has undergraduate degrees in economics and English from Westminster College and Point Park University, an MA in history from Ohio University, and his PhD in the history of education from the University of Pittsburgh. For 37 years he taught a very popular AP history class at Thomas Jefferson High School in Pittsburgh. He has also taught classes as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Allegheny County, the University of Pittsburgh, Eastern Gateway Community College, and in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his wife, Carol, currently reside in Pittsburgh.