February 10, 2015
The Southern Maryland Civil War Round Table is pleased to announce that its next meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 10, 2015 at 7:00pm at the College of Southern Maryland’s Center for Business and Industry, Chaney Enterprises Conference Center, Room BI-113, at 8730 Mitchell Road in La Plata, MD.
Guest Speaker: Dianne Cross
Did you ever visit your grandparent’s, an aunt, or some other family relation and notice a photograph/picture hanging on the wall or over the mantle? Did you know who it was? Was there a story about it; maybe even a thought that this person was a distant relative or had some other connection to your kin? Did you have a nickname for the image; “The Senator”, “The Colonel”, or “The Little Man in the Suit”? Dianne Cross has such a recollection! Hanging in her grandmother’s home and known to her, her siblings and all of her cousins as “The Soldier”, a colorful drawing of a US Colored Troop soldier, with cannon, knapsacks, tents and an American flag in the background, it was surmised that “The Soldier” was in a Union Army campground. The family’s oral history indicates a possible relationship to her family. Inspired by the Alex Haley novel and subsequent television mini-series “Roots“, as well as by the PBS broadcast of “The Civil War“, Ms. Cross decided to learn a bit more about “The Soldier”. Via Internet searches and culling through numerous records at the National Archives, Ms. Cross was not only able to establish the identity of “The Soldier”, but also positively confirm her family’s oral history. We invite you to join us tonight as Dianne Cross shares with us her journey of exploration, education and enlightenment as to the true identity of the “The Soldier”, a.k.a. Issac Hall.
Born and reared in Moorestown, New Jersey, Diane Cross attended Rutgers University. Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, she began her professional career with R.C.A. Retiring in 2007 from L-3 Communications, she now resides in Laurel, MD with her husband Lewis and “The Soldier”. Ms. Cross has created a website, www.longoverduestory.com, which has many of the documents she found in the course of her research. We welcome Dianne Cross and hope like she does, that her story will spark an interest in learning more about your family story.
Rescheduled from December 2013 due to inclement weather, The Southern Maryland Civil War Roundtable will host a presentation by Civil War author Dr. James I. Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus from Virginia Tech and author of over 20 books, whose works include “Stonewall Jackson, The Man, The Myth, and The Legend”, “Civil War!”, “America Becomes One Nation”, “General A.P. Hill”, and “Soldiers Blue and Gray”.
will sponsor a lecture given by James Ogden, Historian, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park and Moccasin Bend National Archeological District on Wednesday, June 11, 2014 at the Leonardtown Library at 7:00pm.
in a purposeful show of reconciliation and reunification; once divided, now reunited. One of the places where this Gilded Age agenda played out, the first place, was on ground hallowed by some of those very veterans in 1863—Chickamauga and Chattanooga—the battles of one of the most important campaigns of the war, a campaign in which both sides could claim a victory, Chickamauga for the Confederates, Chattanooga for the Union.