Cleaning out the dusty attic of his childhood home in Churchill a little more than a decade ago, Carleton Young made an intriguing discovery.
Stuffed in an old wooden box was a trove of letters written during the Civil War. They were penned by two young brothers who fought in the Union Army, offering a vivid glimpse into the war-stricken era.
“I wasn’t real sure what to do,” Mr. Young said of the some 250 letters he uncovered that were addressed to their parents. “I felt pretty overwhelmed.”
Capturing his imagination, the discovery led to a years-long inquiry, culminating into a book that weaves together the two soldiers’ indelible experiences during the decisive four-year war.
Since its release last December, his self-published book, “Voices from the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War,” has drawn considerable attention.
Mr. Young, a 55-year-old retired high school history teacher who lives in Castle Shannon, has made a number of appearances, giving talks at historical societies and libraries in the Pittsburgh area and throughout the Northeast. He is scheduled to give a presentation at the Peters Township Public Library at 7 p.m. on Dec. 1.
“We’re anticipating a big crowd,” said Carrie Weaver, the library’s public relations coordinator. As of last week, nearly 100 people had registered to attend the talk, which would bring the library close to its seating capacity.
Spanning about three years until the end of the war in 1865, the letters are remarkable, offering stark descriptions and going “in depth on a lot of things that many soldiers didn’t,” Mr. Young said. He cited haunting depictions of battlefield injuries, amputations, executions and disease.
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“Everything they saw was written down on paper,” he said.
While not every letter was morbid — one included a thorough description of building winter quarters — they probably didn’t consistently console their parents. At one point, Mr. Young noted, one of the brothers promised that he would write home as soon as possible, so long as he survived a coming battle.
The letters were found by Mr. Young and his wife, Carol, about 12 years ago, as they were cleaning out his late parents’ two-story brick home. They were well preserved, tucked in opened envelopes addressed to the brothers’ parents, who lived in Vermont.
Intrigued, Mr. Young turned to a handful of friends who are Civil War enthusiasts. They, along with their wives, began poring over the letters, gathering every month at one of their homes to transcribe them.
The undertaking was immense, involving extensive research and lasting about five years. Among the challenges was deciphering the handwriting; the brothers used what was known as cross-hatching, a technique in which lines are written both horizontally and vertically that was meant to conserve paper.
“We got more and more interested,” Mr. Young said, noting visits to battlefields and meetings with historians and park rangers. After a few years, he added, the group agreed that the letters “needed to be put into a book.”
The brothers, Francis and Henry Martin, enlisted in the Army of the Potomac, the main Union force in the East, and fought in the same brigade. They were in their mid-20s at the time.
They were well-educated, having gone to private secondary school. (In those days, most people had only elementary educations, Mr. Young noted). Francis Martin worked as an undercover correspondent, writing for a hometown newspaper under the pseudonym Conscript.
As for how the letters wound up in the attic of Mr. Young’s childhood home, it took him about two years to retrace their provenance. He ended up traveling to Montpelier, Vt., to research family records.
It turns out that the brothers were relatives-in-law of Mr. Young, whose father found their letters while cleaning out the attic of his own mother’s home in Maine in the 1980s. They were from Williamstown, Vt., near where Mr. Young’s father grew up.
It’s possible that Mr. Young’s parents never looked inside the box.
For Mr. Young, who has a doctorate in history education, the letters were too precious, and too revealing, to leave untold.
The brothers, he said, “they don’t hold anything back.”
For more details about Mr. Young’s presentation at the Peters Township Public Library, call 724-941-9430 or visit the library website.
Jake Flannick, freelance writer: suburbanliving@post-gazette.com.
First Published: November 25, 2016, 5:37 a.m.
