Civil War News
20
August 2021
Index showing Utoy Creek. index at the end of volume three to find information from all the volumes. Remember to check WorldCat http://www.worldcat. org/ for help in finding this work in a local library. Search: ‘Dyer’s Compendium’ to locate this valuable source! Continued luck in your research!
Dyer’s Compendium: Part II Chronological Record of the Campaigns, Battles, Engagements, Actions, Combats, Sieges, Skirmishes, Etc. The column for this month draws from a general overview of Dyer’s Compendium, as detailed in the August 2016 edition of The Source. This time, a focus on part two of the series will assist readers in quickly locating the dates of particular engagements and determining the Federal units involved in the action. First, a brief recap from 2016. Frederick H. Dyer’s A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion focused almost exclusively on Federal units; little to no Confederate records were included. Dyer, a veteran of the 7th Connecticut Infantry Regiment, began amassing various resource materials soon after the war. He spent 40 years scouring the country, collecting regimental reports, gleaning newspaper accounts, consulting the Official Records, and talking with other veterans. Initially published in 1909, a three-volume reprint under the guidance of Bell Wiley emerged just before the centennial. Morningside published another edition in 1978. This article references the 1959 version but remains applicable to any of the three versions in print. Volume two opens with a most useful index of military actions
Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and
instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com or request speaking engagements via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/michael.k.shaffer, and Twitter @michaelkshaffer.
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Dyer’s Compendium cover page. listed alphabetically. In keeping with the cover date of this issue of CWN, this writer opted to search for a battle from August and, using the various indices within this volume, selected the August 5-7,
1864 Battle of Utoy Creek. (See image shown.) Next, the location of the main entry for this battle provides a listing of the Federal units present. Researchers can consult the
Federal Units at Utoy Creek.
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Civil War News
August 2021