Imagine clearing out your family attic and discovering hundreds of letters written during the Civil War. Faced with that situation, and not knowing why his family had the letters, Pittsburgh’s Carleton Young traced the sources to discover how two Vermont soldiers fit into his family heritage.
Young shared his story with the Bridgeville Historical Society last month. Using excerpts from the letters, which are filled with in-depth accounts of battles and army life, he weaved together a war-time narrative told from a first-person point of view.