Coming Soon from Imaging Specialists

While researching online for our upcoming book, Four Brothers in Gray, we’ve found a few things we weren’t looking for. ISI is reprinting the book with permission from Wilkes Community College (who has copyrights to the 1975 work by Mary Alice Hancock.)

In it, Miss Hancock tells about the Proffit family of Wilkes County, North Carolina, and the four sons of William and Mary Proffit that left home to fight for the South in the Great Rebellion.  She uses the boys’ own words- excerpts taken from over 100 letters sent home to Lewis Fork by the boys and their cousins to trace their paths through the war.

The oldest, Andrew J. Profit, was captured twice by the Union: first at Chancellorsville and released, then at Spotsylvania, where this time, he was sent to Pt. Lookout, a Northern prison in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay.

At Chancellorsville, he was officially- and erroneously- listed by Colonel John Barry as killed in action while bearing the flag of the 18th NC Infantry. But Andy was, in fact, captured and later wrote in a letter to his father, “the Yanks… took us to Washington and kept us about 13 days… treated us with great respect, give us plenty to eat…”

The flag he was captured with is now on display at the NC Museum of History.

The 18th NC Infantry Regiment flag captured by Union forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville and now on display at the North Carolina Museum of History

While looking for images of Pt. Lookout, we found one through the Library of Congress website. The image, hosted at Civil War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society is described as:

[Prisoners at Point Lookout taking the oath of allegiance] [Albumen print]
CREATED/PUBLISHED June 30, 1865 and a larger image is on their site here.

We also found a discussion board at Authentic Campaigner Website & Forums, discussing the NYHS image here, and whether the men were actually taking an oath or possibly just, as someone named froghunter suggested, at a “conclusion of Sunday school class with a hand holding prayer. They could be Methodists.”

Poster yeoman stated the image was also printed in The Photographic History of the Civil War: in ten volumes (1911), Volume 3 and that a low res version of the book is available online, here where the caption states, The Last Confederate Prisoners Take the Oath at Pt. Lookout.

Todd Watts said they couldn’t have been the last group, as the book says the photo was taken in, “late April” and he has, “a copy of my ancestor’s oath of allegiance taken at Point Lookout in June, 1865. So this particular group, if photographed in April is not the final group to take the oath there.”

NYHS and the Library of Congress say June 30 and the 1911 book says late April. yeoman finally replies, “As far as being free from factual error… horseshoes and hand grenades.”

We agree. Accounts from that time don’t always match up. Even from eyewitnesses like Colonel Barry and Andrew Proffit.

But, we think they are, in fact, the last group from Pt. Lookout.

Image at New-York Historical Society

Image from Photographic History of the Civil War
(From a double page spread)

Look closely at the two photos: same men, same time, same poses, down to the folds of their clothes-
Except for behind the judge’s bench. In the book, there are two men standing behind the bench and in the NYHS image, there’s only one. Two different shots. Someone stood up (or sat down) but nobody else moved. They didn’t as much as shift their weight or change their stance. Big deal?

In those days, two shots that close together in time, was a big deal- possibly requiring two cameras with two photographers or more probably one, really fast photographer wanting to get an important shot.

A shot like the last group to leave the prison.

Imaging Specialists reproduced a set of A Photographic History… in the 1990′s for a leather-bound edition by a national publisher. We dismantled two sets of original 1911 books acquired from a library in Minnesota and shot the actual pages on our cameras, so we have a little history with this historical title.

The newest edition of Alleghany County Cemeteries through 1986, available now at the Sparta Store

Imaging Specialists has reworked the Alleghany Cemeteries book to make it easier to use and more sturdy in the latest edition, available now. As the supply of the original books dwindled, the Alleghany Historical – Genealogical Society board knew changes had to be made.

The 8.5″ x 11″ books were originally perfect-bound (or paperback style binding) on the short dimension making them cumbersome to use as they were over 22″ wide when fully opened. This configuration also stressed the binding so much that most of the books’ spines would eventually break apart, releasing pages or groups of pages.

Even with these structural problems, the book has been in demand since it was introduced in 1986. The Historical Society at that time did such a good job of documenting existing cemeteries that their effort has become one of the most useful and respected resources ever produced by AHGS. The Society gets regular requests for an updated version or a second volume- a task that would probably exceed the original project as names and information for the past 27 years would have to be researched and added.

The original edition, edited by Lou Reed Landreth with “Computerization” by Lynn Lambert, and help from Elvira Crouse, Pearl Reeves and Marvie Shelor- and probably every able bodied volunteer they could muster- was printed by New River Graphics in 1988.

The new edition will be printed, “on-demand” as orders come in. In this way the society won’t have to initiate a traditional press run, or raise  thousands of dollars in up-front production costs, or incur subsequent years of storage costs.

On-demand pricing is higher per unit, but it makes sense for a non-profit organization so that operating funds aren’t tied up in a long term inventory.

Spiral binding will allow field researchers to more easily keep their place whether they are at a single page or looking at a double page spread, without stress to the binding. Thicker pages should also add to the book’s longevity.

Pages from the first volume were individually scanned so the data is exactly as it appeared in the original.

Books are now available at the Sparta Store on Main Street in Sparta, North Carolina or here, online for $27 plus tax and shipping.

If you came to the release party for Paths & Passages -Navigating the Blue Ridge and Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Gretchen, you’ve heard our latest news. If you weren’t able to attend, here it is:

Saturday, the 20th, we traveled to Mooresville, NC for the annual awards banquet of the North Carolina Society of Historians. Imaging Specialists was well represented this year: Claire Halsey was awarded a Paul Jehu Barringer, Jr. & Sr. Award of Excellence for her genealogy work and Jeff Halsey was named the NCSH Historian of the Year!

ISI also received a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award for the latest book in our history series, Regimental History of the 61st NC Infantry (published last fall) about Alleghany County men in the Civil War. We gathered text, photos, battle maps and battle summaries for the book; laid out and re-set the text; and optimized the photos for the book which is now available on-demand from Star Route Books and in our shop in Sparta.

Suzanne Mellow Irwin and Zach Hamm, with their families, also attended the meeting and won awards for the first in their series of children’s books, The Stratford Oaks Tales. Zach received a Paul Green Multimedia Award for his artwork and Suzanne a Clark Cox Historical Fiction Award for the story.

A couple of projects of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society also won awards. We were proud to accept awards for the newsletter- our fourth!- Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award and the Alleghany Historical Museum, which won an Evelina D. Miller Museum Award.

Elizabeth Bray Sherrill, President NCSH and Jeff Halsey NCSH 2012 Historian of the Year

Imaging Specialists publishes the AHGS quarterly newsletters. We also produce the books in the Stratford Oaks series.

We plan to submit several projects and nominate others others in our community for consideration in 2013.

If you know of other projects you think deserve recognition, nomination forms are located on the NCSH site.

Imaging Specialists and the Halsey family is proud to have accepted these honors from the North Carolina Society of Historians. We sincerely appreciate the consideration of President Elizabeth Sherrill, the NCSH Board and the Judges. And we appreciate the help and support of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society.

We’ve got some exciting book projects planned at Star Route. Here are summaries of what’s coming:

The cover of Paths and Passages

Paths and Passages, Navigating the Blue Ridge: Available now. Photographs of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwestern North Carolina. Scenes of the New River and the Blue Ridge Parkway in Ashe and Alleghany Counties by photographer, Jeff Halsey. The latest from Star Route Books and first in a series of photographic portfolios that attempt to describe and define the mountain region.

Tea Time Recipes: Available now. The much sought-after Dirty Fingers Garden Club cookbook, originally published in 2004 and out of print for many years, is available once again! Now you can learn how to make such delicacies as Cherry-and-Cream Scones, Strawberry Pound Cake, and Lavender Blueberry Soup. 20 photos are included, in black and white and in color.

Stratford Oaks Tales, The Tale of Clyde: Available September 2012. In the follow-up to The Tale of Gretchen, Dr. Suzanne Mellow-Irwin shares the story of a young calf and how he persevered to join the herd. Zach Hamm’s delicate pencil art complements Suzanne’s inspiring message.

Sparta Presbyterian Church’s Centennial Cookbook: Available September 2012. This popular cookbook was originally printed in 2006, in celebration of the Church’s Centennial. The book is now available once again; it quickly sold out during the first printing.

Emma Jean’s Blue Ridge Almanac: Available Late 2012. Emma Jean’s Blue Ridge Almanac is written, printed, and published in Sparta, North Carolina. Featuring a calendar, community events, important phone numbers and email addresses for town and county departments, home remedies and more, it is a general resource for folks in Ashe County, NC, Alleghany County, NC and Grayson County, VA.

The Westover Manuscripts: Coming 2013. Written in the 1720s and 1730s, The Westover Manuscripts focuses on the efforts to map the border between NC and VA, as well as other surveying trips during early years of our colonization. The book was actually three books all written by Virginian William Byrd. The “Land of Eden” refers to North Carolina.

Four Brothers in Gray: Coming 2013. A collaborative project with Wilkes Community College, Four Brothers in Gray is the story of the four Proffit sons who went to fight in the Civil War, and the one who returned. The book recounts the Wilkes County family’s wartime experiences in their own words with excerpts from 126 letters.

Get more information on those projects at the Star Route Books site.

The much sought-after Dirty Fingers Garden Club cookbook, Tea Time Recipes, originally published in 2004 and out of print for many years, is available once again! Now you can learn how to make such delicacies as Cherry-and-Cream Scones, Strawberry Pound Cake, and Lavender Blueberry Soup.

The DFGC meets at (and owns) the “Meeting House” in Piney Creek. The Meeting House was originally built in 1875 for the Piney Creek Primitive Baptist Church which was established in 1825.

“Being the oldest church in the area the early church grew rapidly and exerted great influence on the lives in the community. The names of most of the early settlers and their families are recorded on its books. During the months October to January 1857-1858, the church received 86 new members.”

- History of Alleghany County, 1859-1976

Tea Time Recipes from the Dirty Fingers Garden Club in Piney Creek, North Carolina.

The club hosts their celebrated English Teas at the newly-renovated structure throughout the year. The recipes in the book are the best of the best dishes from these well-loved events. For tickets, contact Sara McMillan, Glenna Gambill or anyone in the Dirty Fingers Garden Club! Groups are welcome.

Proceeds from the book go to the Dirty Fingers Garden Club, a member of the Garden Club of North Carolina, for their many community projects and events.

The recipe book is available from The Sparta Store, both online and in the shop at 3 North Main in Sparta.

Got a great cookbook idea for your organization? Contact Imaging Specialists, today!