Civil War

Mapping the Battle of Roanoke, From the Personal Perspective of James Merril Linn

December 12, 2016 by ejp013

For my portion of the final project, I worked at mapping Linn’s journal entries from February 12 – March 12, 1862 spatially using arcGIS online. To accomplish this goal, I used a combination of period maps and in-text research to sketch out a basic view of Linn’s travels, and then digitized my results. The section of journal I worked on primarily concerned the Battle of Roanoke Island, and the various logistical work done before and after the battle. Almost all of Linn’s travel by foot occurs on Roanoke Island, as the only other place he visits is Elizabeth City, during a short supply run.

These maps proved incredibly helpful for me, as Lynn mentions many place names that were temporary, or too insignificant to warrant marking on a larger map. Still, even with this help there were numerous locations I was unable to identify. Some of these locations, like the location of the Cossack was approximated to a general area based on other knowledge in the text. Other issues I encountered were some of the fort names, which confused me at first, until I realized that after being taken for the Union, all the forts were renamed. Fort Hugher became Fort Reno, Fort Blanchard became Fort Park, and Fort Bartow became Fort Foster. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find the location of ‘Fort Russel’, as it wasn’t labeled on the maps, and there were too many generic gun batteries without names to be sure.

In Red: Forts/Gun Batteries/Redoubts. One is most likely the elusive Fort. — In Red: Forts/Gun Batteries/Redoubts. One is most likely the elusive Fort Russel.

The island of Roanoke seems to be fairly small, as after taking it, Lynn traverses it fairly frequently, visiting most it’s various forts and ruins during his time there. Given the closeness of the various points on the island, I thought it would be too hard to read if I put in a line that traced his journey, as I was missing a few points, and he often doubles back and criss-crosses his previous paths. Instead I used the line tool to give a rough approximation of the Ship’s journey, based on the natural landmarks described by Linn, such as Stumpy Point, and Ocracoke Inlet.

Overview of ArcGIS map, showing Linn's journey on the Cossack to Elizabeth City, and the approach to New Berne. — Overview of ArcGIS map, showing Linn’s journey on the Cossack to Elizabeth City, and the approach to New Berne.

The goal of this digital mapping was to provide a potential viewer with an interactive visual to help aid in their spatial understanding. I though this was especially important given the intermittent mentioning of place names like Ashby’s Landing, and Neuse River that are most likely to be unfamiliar to a casual observer. Although it was a little too complicated, I would have liked to incorporate the feature of being able to click on a location, and then going to the place in the journal where the location was referenced. This would have allowed a potential user to gain more access to the surrounding content, as well as providing an excellent way of bringing someone who might just be looking at maps, into reading the actual journal itself.

Closer view of ArcGIS map, showing Roanoke Island

I really enjoyed being able to work on this part of the project, as I have done work with GIS before, and even work with historical GIS, but I have never recreated a map based on primary source data. It was also cool to work with a figure in local history, the rest of whose personal documents exist at the university I go to! I hope this provides a good addition to the site, to be expanded and modified in the future, as I think it is an excellent option for more visual learners, as well as being a cool graphic that can provide a more interactive counterpoint to the text transcriptions.

James Merrill Linn the… Cartographer?

December 12, 2016 by ejp013

What I learned most from doing the markup was to get a much clearer picture of the various locations described when I marked up for placeNames. When I first read through the letter, it was difficult to conceptualize in my head where/what every location he referred to was, but as I was doing the markup and cross-referencing to the document, I started comparing the various names with Lynn’s hand drawn map, which helped me visually think about it. I also had to think about how to represent the map in my markup, and while I was interested in perhaps inserting a photo of just the map into my markup, it proved to be a little too difficult, so I ended up just marking spaces every time the writing wrapped around his map.

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Additionally, when I was first skimming the letter I didn’t really get a sense of what he was talking about in a big picture sense, but marking up the various objects and groups (like Carolinians, or Prisoners) I was able to summarize that most of the letter dealt with the after effects of a battle (I believe the battle of Roanoke), and it seems Linn’s regiment was involved with two main tasks, first the housing and care of the prisoners captured, and second, the transporting of supplies up and down the sound. Unfortunately, as I was not able to view the original archive copy, most of the last words before the line break on the 2nd page were illegible, as the document is slightly folded in the photo, which covers up the last part of each line.

Although much of the letter is spent detailing the mundane day to day activities of army life, I enjoyed the few times in which Linn revealed some of his deeper feelings about what he what he was doing. Such as close to the end of the first page when he says “I hope this war will thoroughly disgust Americans with war.” Lynn does his duties with honor and discipline, although he is anything but a mindless soldier. He seems to take most things in stride, always finding the positive things in his life to keep the tone of his letters light, remarking on the subject that “one cannot expect his pathway to be strewn with flowers.”

James Merrill Linn: Town Hero

November 19, 2016 by Julia

Fortunately, James Merrill Linn’s handwriting and I share some history, so I did not have as difficult of a time transcribing his writing this time around. I transcribed two letters, one to his brother and one to the Lewisburg Chronicle. I think it is fascinating to have to basically decode a letter in order to read it. I really enjoyed transcribing the letter to the Chronicle in particular because it was different from his journals and letters I had read in the past. While I would consider myself a sufficient subscriber, there were still many words and phrases that were indecipherable. I discovered a range of solutions to my problems. First, I would search the letters I could read into Google. This worked maybe 20% of the time to find the word that I was searching for. This is one example where I screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-8-59-53-pm knew it was a name but could not figure out every letter to get the correct name. So I searched “Beauveyard” into Google, where it suggested searching for “Beauregard” instead. It turns out that he was a famous Southern military officer, and was the first prominent general of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Another way I discovered a word was with the help of my peers. They proved incredibly helpful many times because they provided a fresh set of eyes or had seen the same word in their letter. If none of these ways worked I forfeited and marked it up as unreadable.

Thankfully the Linn letters are located in the Archives, because in the end it is helpful to have the option of seeing them in person. I thought it was beneficial to have the option of looking at the physical letter with a magnifying glass, or zooming in on the photo of the letter screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-9-22-52-pm on my computer. I found that both ways were equally helpful. Sometimes the computer image would blur the word too much that I could not see the one line that was necessary to decipher the word. On the other hand, it was helpful to have it on the computer because I could zoom in as close as I wanted. I also liked transcribing from the computer image because I would constantly lose my spot in his letter when looking at in while in the Archives.

Interestingly, the letter that James wrote to the Lewisburg Chronicle is very dissimilar to his journal entry written on the same date. Linn wrote his journal solely for himself, assuming that he would be the only one to read them, so he wrote about his personal experiences, rather than what was going on in the war. His letter to the Lewisburg Chronicle was meant for the whole public to have read. This is why he wrote about where they were going, the Colonels and officers he encountered, and their battles. He wrote about the batteries, the rebels, and the swamps they had to wade through rather than about the weather because that is what the people of Lewisburg would have preferred to read about.

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