behind AotW

a companion to Antietam on the Web

  • New Timeline for AotW

    A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite Internet-friends, Andrew Vande Moere*, mentioned the Simile Timeline API in a post on his information aesthetics blog. Timeline is described by its creators as …

    … a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information … Pan the timeline by dragging it horizontally … like Google Maps, you can populate Timeline with data by pointing it to an XML file …

    This weekend I finally had a little time to see what it can do, and found it’s great fun.

    It is one of those rare, beautiful little software gems with a clear purpose and excellent execution.

    The documentation is crap–beyond the basic installation–but that’s just a quibble. Perhaps I can help improve the docs later. It’s also a bit slow in loading events and misbehaves sometimes in IE. Another quibble. For now, I’ll have fun discovering all the controls and features by dint of ‘reverse engineering’ or trial and error. And I prefer Firefox anyway.

    So, perhaps obviously, I’ve made use of this fine tool for a new Campaign Timeline on AotW. Give it a spin, won’t you, and provide some constructive criticism? I think it has huge potential.

    screen shot: timeline
    AotW timeline screenshot

    I’ve seeded my timeline with content from the 200-odd battlefield historical tablets. I used those events because I’d already transcribed them in the database, and had serendipitously included time stamps for each as I did the data entry. The timeline application reads events from an xml file, so it wasn’t too difficult to write some php code to extract and write the xml from a tailored Events table in my database.

    Now, un/fortunately, I can hear hundreds of other 1862 events calling out to me.

    Add me! Add me!

    Yet another hungry project mouth to feed.
    _________________

    * Vande Moere finds people using the most incredibly creative and useful ways to display information and pops them up on his blog. As a closet Tuftean, I’m a big fan. Usually, however cool, I can see no good way to use these amazing techniques. Until now. Thank you Andrew.

    In Googling keywords mit, simile, and timeline, looking for other people using the Timeline API (hoping for clues to customizing it) I found about 200 unique references. Only about 10 of these are actual users. Everybody else is just talking about how cool it is. I wonder when/if web timelines built on this will be common?

  • Another Huzzah! and meet Colonel Hall

    As many others have observed, one of the best things about the Web is the great range it covers, and new contacts it brings. What ever else it is, AotW is a honeytrap – drawing people worldwide with interest in the battle. A small but impressive minority of these visitors have something to contribute. It’s always a thrill to hear from them.

    Once such Internet-friend, Mr John Jackson, has been doing marvelous work in researching and documenting Kansans and Kansas in the Civil War. He has twice now suggested obituaries for Antietam soldiers from among his boys, both also Medal of Honor holders.

    A great huzzah for Mr Jackson!

    Last month he pointed me to the musically named Orpheus Saeger Woodward. This week he’s introduced me to Henry Seymour Hall.

    H.S. Hall
    Lt. Col. H.S. Hall, c. 1864

    Hall was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1891 for bravery on two occasions during the War: for continuing to lead his company in the attack while wounded at Gaines’ Mill (June 1862) and for service in rallying troops at Rappahannock Station (November 1863).

    From a farming family in east-central New York state, he was 25 years old and in his final year at Genesee College (later Syracuse University) when War began in 1861. He organized a Company of fellow students–later Co. G–and enlisted with them in the new 27th New York Infantry as Private in April that year. He was almost immediately appointed 2nd Lieutenant and served with the 27th on the Peninsular Campaign. He was promoted to Captain in command of the Company to date from April 1862. It was at that rank that he fought at Crampton’s Gap, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.

    He was honorably mustered out as the 27th Infantry’s term of service expired on 31 May 1863, but was back in service just over two weeks later, appointed Captain in the 121st New York Volunteers on 16 June.

    In May 1864 he left to accept a commission as Lieutenant Colonel of the new 43rd Regiment, United States Colored Troops. He was severely wounded in action at the Crater, near Petersburg, on 30 July, losing his right arm.

    While recuperating, he served as a mustering officer in Washington, but was back with the 43rd at Richmond by 3 April 1865. He was also with them at Brownsville, Texas under Sheridan, then on independent duty at Galveston until returning to Washington and mustering out of the Army on 13 February 1866.

    He had been honored, in March 1865, by brevet to Colonel and Brigadier General of Volunteers for his exceptional War service.

    Immediately after the War he returned briefly to New York, but soon moved to a farm he’d bought in Carroll County, Missouri, where he was also active in local politics. Some time later he was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1888 he moved for the last time to Lawrence, Kansas where he lived his last 20 years.

    ______________

    Information above from the (Lawrence) Daily Gazette obituary posted by Mr Johnson, Heitman’s Register, pg. 489, and Hall’s MoH citation. The photograph is from Generals of the Civil War.

  • More digital history rubber

    I’m having a magnificent time with stacks of books I’ve just found rendered online. They’re in a (new?) collection of 19th Century American works transcribed and posted as part of the Perseus project at Tufts, and from the University of Georgia library’s collection of Facsimile Books.

    from ... Uniforms (below)

    I came upon these while looking into a relatively obscure artillery unit, the 6-months 8th Massachusetts Battery and their commander Asa M. Cook.

    The first information I’ve found on the battery is in a capsule history written, on behalf of the State, by T.H. Higginson, late of the 51st Massachusetts and Colonel, First South Carolina, USCT. His two volume Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865 (1895-96) is transcribed and posted at Perseus.

    The battery’s commander at Antietam was Captain Cook, whose image I found in the Photographic History of the Civil War (1911-12) by Francis T. Miller. This is in the Facimile collection as searchable (uncorrected OCR) text and as full page images. You may have this 10 volume set at your local library, we do, but it’s a delight to find it digital.

    But wait, there’s more.

    Let me tempt you with some highlights … (more…)

  • Praise for the USAMHI

    A quick Huzzah! for the fine folks at the US Army’s Military History Institute (USAMHI), Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. I’m sorry to say I’ve never visited in person, but they have been immensely helpful to me over several years by snail and email.

    Most recently, I heard from Mr Richard Baker, a Technical Information Specialist at the Institute. I had asked for a copy of a standing portrait photograph of Major Edmund Rice, 19th Massachusetts Infantry. I’d also noticed some confusion in the caption in another picture of the Major–grouped with officers of the 17th Michigan Infantry–published in William C. Davis’ Touched by Fire. In addition to sending me the requested photo, Mr Baker went above and beyond by also finding the original image Mr Davis used, and identifying all the officers therein (Rice; Lt. Harrison Berdan, 5th Michigan Cavalry; Captains Delos Phillips and Benjamin Safford, 17th Michigan Infantry).

    This kind of service is probably the norm at the USAMHI, but it knocked my socks off.
    Huzzah! Huzzah!

    ____________________

    Here’s a scan, by the way, of that portrait of Rice. One tough customer.

    Edmund Rice

  • Famous neighbor

    After living in the neighborhood for more than 15 years, I finally visited the old St. James Cemetery just over a block from our house. It’s fairly small, maybe 200 yards square, and is tucked in among the homes in a quiet residential area. Established in 1873, it was company to a chapel of that name, which moved to a large, new, impressive church on the other side of our little town in 1902.

    One of the most prominent stones is also accompanied by a Confederate flag and “Cross of Honor”. It marks the graves of Fountain Beattie (1840-1923) and his wife Annie (1846-1911). It’s in a family row ending with a burial in the 1960s. The dog and I returned last weekend to get some photos.

    Beattie Stone

    Fountain is probably one of “my guys”. I’m not absolutely certain he was at Sharpsburg in September 1862, but it is likely.

    He is perhaps best known to students of John Singleton Mosby – the Gray Ghost – who operated as a “partisan ranger” across Northern Virginia for most of the War. Beattie and Mosby were privates and tentmates in the Washington Mounted Rifles, which became Company D of the 1st Virginia Cavalry in July 1861. By July 1862 Mosby was a Lieutenant and scout on JEB Stuart’s staff; Beattie was still a private with the 1st Virginia. (more…)