Hist 390 Blog

This week we discussed mapping and when we use maps in our personal lives. Personally, the only time I use physical maps is in ROTC for land navigation, but I use electronic maps a lot more for GPS in a car. We also had to map our soldier’s life by figuring out where he has been all his life. My soldier, Conrad Kahler was born in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany and came over to the U.S. sometime before 1861 (when he enlisted). During the war, he did not travel that much, he mustered-in at New York City and then traveled to Bull Run, VA where he was shot in the left forearm and mustered-out. He eventually settled down in Philadelphia, PA with his family of eight.

Mapping out my soldier’s life has let me see visually how much pressure those soldiers had on them to get to a Battle. When I saw on a map of New York City to Bull Run, I am more understanding on how physically stressed there bodies were. This just makes me feel even closer to my soldier.

This past weekend we were asked to keep a log of what clothes we wear, who we talk too, and what we drank.  I found that the hardest thing was keeping track of everything. I wore a total of 12 change of clothes in four days, which I found very surprising. Also I realized that I talk to a lot of different people in various activities I’m involved in around campus. It really put in perspective on how many things I’m involved in which felt good. Finally, out of the three things we kept track of, drinks were the hardest to keep up to date even though I drink mostly water. I drink about 7-10 cups of water a day due to working out and sometimes an occasional Gatorade which really put in perspective on what I’m putting in my body. Overall, I felt like Daytum was a successful experiment and learned a lot about myself.

During this week, we set up our Omeka accounts which are the most important step to organizing all of our soldier’s data. This service that Omeka provides is free and lets us organize the data in such a way that it is a visual representation. We also created two more google doc spreadsheets in order to organize our soldier’s life during and after the Civil War. These tabs also help us organize the data into Omeka. Also, we were instructed on how to add items to our Omeka account which includes inserting images and texts if need be.

This week in class, we were asked to do our midterm evaluation, which I felt strong about because I believed I answered the short answer questions with good detail. After our midterm, we created a new tab in our google doc for our soldiers. The new tab is an important that ties our soldier to specific dates and events. The columns we created in this tab were date, place, what he was doing there, and source of every piece of information.

Our soldiers are more than just basic traits that we’ve been collecting like height, weight, eye color, etc. Although, describing the physical attributes is important, we also need to realize that these civil soldiers did remarkable things for this country and some of them paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and for what we stand for today. For example, Conrad Kahler of the 29th New York Infantry took a gun shot to the forearm and still finished the battle of Bull Run. I could never imagine doing such a thing for something that I feel like didn’t effect me.

For all of my passwords, they are written down on a piece of paper and stored in a book in my drawer. I use about five passwords interchangeably and random. When I create a new password now, I try to make words out of numbers and symbols, this way it’s hard to guess, but easy to remember for myself. Thankfully, I have never been hacked (knock on wood) and will continue to use secure connections to access personal information and will only go on public sites when using public connections. I have a hard drive from my last computer that still works, which I converted it to a external hard drive. Now I back up my entire laptop onto to the external hard drive. After lecture, I have realized how important it is to back up everything because it is only matter of time when my laptop will crash. I hope that I will take what I have learned and will continue to be cautious on the my laptop.

The past week we had a visit from Mrs. Lownwarter from the Blenheim house. She showed us some of our soldiers graffiti and learned facts about our soldier. It is very nice to see that these soldiers meant a world to someone and our research will help those who cared for them. We also learned how to tell if a website is appropriate to use or not which is good information to have in general. I am trying to download Zotero, but cannot get it to work on my computer using any of the web browsers (chrome, firefox, or explorer). I have heard good things about this reference management software, so I will figure how to put it on my computer.

When I was researching my soldier, I found out that Conrad Kahler enrolled May 21, 1861 at the age of 35 as New York City as a Captain, Company F, to serve two years. He was mustered in as a Lieutenant Colonel on June 6, 1861. He was wounded in Pope’s Campaign (2nd battle of Manassas) in August 1862. He resigned in August 1863 as a not commissioned Captain; commissioned Lt-Col. June 20, 1861, with rank from May 23, 1861.  And yet of the disability, Kahler was denied of pension on several occasions.  Yet according to the 1870 Census in the U.S., Kahler had seven family members living with him. I found that it must have been difficult for Kahler to keep his family “afloat.”

We were assigned our civil war soldiers today. My soldiers name is Conrad Kahler and is very interesting to get know to him. We organized all of the paperwork given to us about our soldiers into a google document which helps me figure out what documents I have and document I do not have. Through these forms I can figure out whether my soldier was wounded and what kind of treatment he was given. Also I can see when Conrad Kahler enlisted into the army and when he was discharged from the army. This information will be able to help understand what he went through during this time. I am looking forward to getting to know my soldier better.

Last class we discussed how historians look at history using technology. I have always thought historians knew a little about all periods of history. Generalization though is the last thing historians do and they look at specific periods/moments in history, but what worries my history knowledge is the human nature of being biased. We as people have a tendency of being biased and putting our own spin on events that has happened, so it’s hard to separate fiction from fact. For this reason, history is a great subject to study because it is a challenge to obtain the truth. Although difficult to obtain, it can be done if you know where to look, like primary sources.