General Ralph P. Buckland at Vicksburg

The 4th of July 1863, marked the culmination  of the long land and naval campaign by the Union forces to capture the key strategic position of the Civil War - Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. President Abraham Lincoln stated that "Vicksburg is the key, the war can never come to a close until the key is in our pocket." Capturing Vicksburg severed the Confederacy and opened the river to Union traffic along its entire length. Brigadier General Ralph Buckland commanded Tuttle's First Brigade made up of the 114th Illinois, 93rd Indiana, 72nd Ohio, and 95th Ohio. 

Ohio decided that instead of a single monument devoted to all of the Ohio veterans who fought at Vicksburg, it would erect a monument to each of its 39 generals. This brochure, created in 1912, was used to solicit funds from veterans for a monument for General Buckland at Vicksburg Military Park's Union Avenue . 

General Ralph P. Buckland Monument at Vicksburg as it appears today

Vicksburg Battlefield as it appears today

Huntington Family Members Research Their Ancestor's Collection

Mr. and Mrs. William Huntington, Jr. of Maryland joined their cousin Sally Sparhawk of Colorado for a day's research of the papers of their  mutual ancestor Dwight Huntington, lawyer, artist, editor, and wildlife conservationist. Some of Dwight's correspondence, photographs, and watercolor landscapes are a part of the George Buckland Collection. (George Buckland, originally of Fremont, Ohio married Huntington's sister.) 

In 1898, the Cincinnati Sportsman’s Society published In Brush, Sedge, and Stubble: A Picture Book of the Shooting Fields and Feathered Game of North America. It was to be the first of many books Huntington would write and illustrate on wildlife conservation.

Huntington gave up the legal profession in 1900. Passionate about nature and wildlife conservation, he moved to New York and became editor of the Amateur Sportsman and the Game Breeder Magazine. .

Huntington wrote the nation’s first game breeding bill. With the assistance of Franklin D. Roosevelt, then head of New York’s Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, his bill became law in 1912. 

Sally and Bill were so pleased to learn that much of Dwight's material is preserved at the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums that they decided to donate two additional watercolors by Huntington and the galleys to In Brush, Sedge, and Stubble.