Local History: Everyone's Hidden Treasure

Abstract

SEVERAL YEARS AGO a colleague and I edited and saw published in Civil War Times Illustrated the letters of William E. Dunn, a soldier from Black Creek, New York. Researching the young man's life, I was struck by his humanness. No one before had taken any interest in his story. His tale of military service, from the initial enthusiasm of enlistment to the boredom of camp life, and through the anger of defeat to the ultimate misery of prison camps which led to his untimely death, could be lost forever. Not only was Dunn's saga unknown, but that of his unit also had never been told. I researched the Eighty-fifth New York Volunteer Infantry and found yet another tragic story worthy of retelling. (Its history was published in Yesteryears, a magazine devoted to western New York's history and genealogy.) A friend asked me why did I not study the more interesting personalities and units from Virginia. I replied that while I agreed that Virginia's heroes and regiments are better known than those from western New York, for sheer human drama this area's heroes and regiments were equally