The Battle of Antietam

I neglected this blog to finish the latest web page at 13thmass.org.  The new page is up, posted last week September 9th, the 149th anniversary of the campaign.

http://www.13thmass.org/1862/antietam.html

Highlights include previously unpublished accounts of the action from John S. Fay, Co. F, Prince Dunton, Co. H, John B. Noyes, Co. B, and others.   Also included is Lt. Charles B. Fox's detailed casualty list prepared immediately after the battle.  I have made notes to the list with corrections applied from other sources.

The page contains biographical profiles on several soldiers wounded or killed in the fight, including James Lowell,  John L. Forbes,  Will Soule,  Bob Armstrong,  Levi L. Dorr,  Adna P. Hall and Samuel Shelton Gould.

Pictures are important and I spent a lot of time retouching some important images for the page.

Particular care was taken with this famous image of the rail fence along the Hagerstown Pike.  I wanted to use it but it is a bit rough.  My wife taught me some retouching techniques with photoshop, which were much more sophisticated than what I was used to, and I came up with a cleaner version as seen at the top of this post. (That is a lower resolution version of the image for the website, I  have a much larger file on the computer.) These images are available from the Library of Congress Digital Collections - a fabulous resource!!

Here is another sample. 

Adna P. Hall's story is compelling.  It was shared with me from family descendants along with this image of Adna.  I was a little tentative in deciding to retouch this image because the damage runs across the features of the face, but I gave it a concentrated effort.

Here is the result.

As usual, I tried to include a little humor, when possible, and the opportunity was provided for in the text, "New Recruits."

There were the usual uncanny co-incidences that happened to me while I was preparing the page this summer.  Someone wrote me requesting information on Commissary Sgt. Mel Smith.  Only a few days before he wrote I acquired an image of Smith.  Then I noticed Levi L. Dorr specifically mentioned Smith's role in helping him from the field hospital. I posted the photo with Dorr's reminiscence.

  Sorry for neglecting the blog, but I thought the new page had priority.  Comments are appreciated.