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April 28, 2019 at 10:22 am

Alumni News | Carleton Reveals Tale of Two Brothers in Civil War

The Roanoke Times profiles Ohio University alum Carleton Young ’80M in a story headlined “Brothers’ letters from Brandy Station reveal new Civil War insights.”

Voices From the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War, book coverYoung earned an M.A. in History from the College of Arts & Sciences at Ohio University.

In a new book Voices from the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War, Young tells the story of “two Vermont brothers who camped in Culpeper County and fought in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Mine Run, the Wilderness and more,” says the paper.

Their story was unknown until recently, when Pittsburgh resident Carleton Young began cleaning out the attic of his parents’ home after they died. He found an old wooden box filled with about 250 letters written by Henry and Francis Martin, both members of the Union Army of the Potomac’s Vermont Brigade.

“It was all quite confusing to me at first because I had no idea where the letters had come from or why they had ended up in my parents’ attic,” Young wrote the Star-Exponent. “I had never heard of any relatives with the last name of Martin.

“And I could not imagine why, with my interest in history, that my father had never mentioned to me that he had this box of Civil War letters in the attic,” he added.

To unearth answers, Young spent more than a decade retracing the wartime steps of the Martin brothers, walking battlefields where they fought and visiting their home of Williamstown, Vermont. The result of his research is a book, “Voices from the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War.”

Read more in the Roanoke Times.

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