History Detectives Investigates a Photo of a Louisiana Soldier

In episode 7 of season 3 (2005), the History Detectives traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana to visit Tom Pressly who claimed that the Civil War soldier in a photo that he owned was a woman in disguise.  

Tom mentions that the photo appeared in a book called Even More Confederate Faces published in 1983 and that the caption claims that the soldier is an unidentified member of the 2nd Louisiana.

Ultimately, it was decided was that the photo is legitimate, but that this soldier was more than likely male due to measurements taken of the face and that the height was calculated using the rifle as a reference to be 6'.

I was not able to find a video of the episode, but you can read the transcript here.

Talks for the Poplarville Rotary Club and PRCC-Forrest County Branch

I gave my last two scheduled talks of the year this past week.  On Wednesday, I spoke at the Poplarville Rotary Club meeting.  It was challenging because I was told that I only had 15-20 minutes.  My presentation generally runs over an hour, so yikes!  I ended up just giving a brief version of the FAQ's page I have posted here on my blog and showing a couple of visual aids in lieu of my power point presentation.

William Faulkner's Connection With Women Soldiers

A collection of Faulkner's short stories were originally published as a whole in 1938 as The Unvanquished.  Mississippi serves as the setting for the stories, which revolve around the Sartoris family during the war and Reconstruction.  One of the characters is Drusilla who goes off to fight with her uncle in order to avenge the deaths of her fiancee and father.


The book is available for purchase as a hard copy, Nook, or Kindle versions.

(Warning:  "insensitive" language) 

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Amazon