Getting Started

I have been staying tuned to the Civil War blogosphere for some time now, and have often thought about blogging myself.  Well, as you can see, I've decided to make the leap.

I will actually have two blogs going by April.  Shot & Shell, my personal one; and The Great Task Before Us, an official blog I will maintain for my employer, the Gettysburg Foundation. 

I am very proud of being able to work on Great Task.  The goal there is to reach out to the membership of the Gettysburg Foundation and ask them to send me whatever information they have on their Civil War ancestors which will be the foundation of the blog.  It seems like an ambitious undertaking considering I expect a deluge of enthusiastic GF members sending in information on great-great-great-grandpa, but I think modern internet research sources like Ancestry and Footnote will make the project manageable.  I certainly want to give it as much historical integrity as I can, so being able to access primary source documents at the click of a mouse while researching all the soldiers and sailors being sent in to me will be very convenient.

Shot and Shell will be my own personal research projects, notes on my hobby; Civil War living history, and any thoughts that I have on the much anticipated Civil War Sesquicentennial (or not so much anticipated depending on who you ask).  Needless to say, what appears on this blog are my own thoughts which have no correlation with the Gettysburg Foundation, Friends of Gettysburg or the National Park Service blah blah blah.  I will have to work up a more formal disclaimer at some point.

Thanks for reading and I hope to have some cool things ready to go here soon.