“Resurrecting Lost Voices: DIY Digital Archiving” PowerPoint Presentation

Resurrecting Lost Voices The George W. Gould Story

D.I.Y. Digital Archiving Stan Prager, M.A. Public History

Dear Mother …I received your letter of the twenty-third and was very

glad to hear from you and to hear that you were all well but Father I am sorry to hear that he is sick but it is the common lot of man here below and I think the more we suffer in sickness and affliction will better fit us for that world to which we are all hastening if we only make the right use of it. Life is short at the longest and we ought so to live as to be prepared for death at any time for we know not what a day may bring forth we are admonished of the uncertainty of life every day one after annother [sic] of our friends pass away and their places are left vacant never more to [be] filled on earth . . . George W. Gould


D.I.Y. Digital Archiving www.resurrectinglostvoices.com



Who Was George W. Gould?

George W. Gould was a private from Leicester MA in the Massachusetts 25th Volunteers

Gould was killed at the bloody Battle of Cold Harbor in 1864

Letters of George W. Gould belonging to graduate student Morgan Kolakowski loaned to Stan Prager for this project



Who Was George W. Gould?Part II

George W. Gould was born in Providence RI in 1832, and later moved to Leicester MA. A twenty-nine year old laborer, said to be 5’ 5 ½” tall with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a light complexion, on July 10, 1862, he was paid a $125 bounty and enlisted as a Private in Company F of the Massachusetts 25th Volunteers to fight for the Union, leaving his young wife Almira (“Mira”) and their three young children Ada, Cora and Clarra Etta at home. His wife died of typhoid fever while he was deployed. He came home on furlough when he re-enlisted on January 18, 1864, then returned to the front lines where he participated in Grant’s Overland Campaign against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, and lost his life in the fierce fighting at Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864.

George W. Gould initially traveled by ship to New Bern, North Carolina, which had at that time recently fallen to Union forces. The painting below, sourced from the Library of Congress, depicts Camp Oliver at New Bern.

Stan Prager coincidentally read the first of the George W. Gould letters shortly after returning from a visit to the battlefield at New Bern in the vicinity of where George had been stationed. The letters moved him to create a website honoring his memory.


Letter 101

Dear Mother:Having received your letter & one from George on the same day, which was the 11th, I will answer it, so you may know how & where he is, he wrote the 4 the same day he got to Newburn [sic] he says they had a pleasant voyage they started from N.Y. the 31st of July & got there the 4 he was very sea sick until the last day, they had pretty hard fair [sic] on their passage, when they got to Cape Hatteras, they bought there on board a lot of magetty [sic] crackers, which was all they had to eat for one day & night but when they got into camp they had a good breakfast, he was in a rebel tent, one captured when the place was taken, he was well then but very tired. – Letter from Almira Gould to George Gould’s mother, August 13, 1862 , Worcester MA


Letter 102

Dear Mother:There is not much news stirring here just now everything is quiet in this department though there is stirring times in the army of the Potomac I do wish this thing was played out but I don’t see as it is any nearer to an end than it was one year ago but I haint got but seventeen months longer to stay so you see my time is most out.– Letter from George Gould to his mother, May 14, 1863, Camp Oliver, New Bern NC


Letter 103

Dear Mother:I see by the papers that they have had some pretty bloody work at the north on account of this draft I am sorry to see there is not patriotism enough there to help sustain the union I should have thought that the late victories would have sent a thrill of joy to the hearts of the people there and they would have been willing to turn out to a man and helped to close up this war but there is too many copperheads there for that I see is just the worst time they could take to rise if it had been when our side was being defeated I should not thought strange of it but we must take things as they come but they may as well yield for they will have to the government of the United States has got to be sustained and the time has come when we got a government or else there is not halfway work about it, every man refuses to do this at this time is a traitor to his country and ought to be branded as such. – Letter from George Gould to his mother, July 30, 1863, Camp Pickett, near Washington D.C.


Letter 104

Dear Mother:I received your last letter and was very glad to hear from you and should have written to you before but have not felt able my health is very poor and has been this two months I have this fever and ague and it takes a fellow down pretty well I got better and went on duty a few days and was taken down again and am now on the sick list where I intend to stay until I am well enough to go on duty. – Letter from George Gould to his mother, September 11, 1863, Camp Pickett, near Washington D.C.


Letter 105

Dear Mother:You have probably received my letter informing you of the death of Mira she was taken sick the twenty seventh of August and died the 23rd of Sept. she was taken very violently at first and did not sit up any after the first day her Mother was with her all the time and they wrote me she seemed reconciled to the will of God and expressed her willingness to die if it was His will. It is now about three weeks since she died and I can’t realize that I shall see her no more but if I should live to get home and see the vacant chair and the three little motherless children I shall then realize my great loss – Letter from George Gould to his mother, October 12, 1863, Camp Pickett, near Washington D.C.


Letter 106

Dear Mother:I had a letter from Leicester the other day they wrote the children were all well then Ada and Etta were going to school and Cora was as happy as could be they all seem to be contented they wrote that Ada seemed to feel the loss of her mother as much as any child of her age but they are hardly old enough any of them to realize the great loss they have met with they are well provided for at the present it was Mira wish that her Mother should take care of them until I got back and Mr. Mead kindly offered to have them come and I thought it would be better to have them all together I can’t bear the thought of their being separated . . . – Letter from George Gould to his mother, November 3, 1863, Newport News VA


Letter 107

Dear Mother:I guess I will tell you how we live here we have little A tents as they are called about 10 [??] feet long and 8 feet wide with a stockade about three feet high then we have three bunks built, two large enough for two in each and the other just wide enough for one the two wide ones go cross way and the other runs length ways at the foot then we have a stove and wood in the other corner and we have a space in front of a foot and a half for five of us to get round in so you can see we have to be pretty good natured I forgot to mention five guns and equipments [sic] that takes a conspicuous place in front. There is three of us writing to night one is out on guard and the other lays here asleep one of them has just sat down in a bottle of ink and tiped [sic] it over and got his seat slightly marked. – Letter from George Gould to his mother, December 13, 1863, Newport News VA


Letter 108

Dear Sister:I have got the blues to night and I’ve had them these two or three days the reenlisting is going on pretty lively out here and I am half a mind to go in a second time by so doing I can get a furlough home of thirty days and what to do I don’t know I want to come home bad enough but then three years after sticks rather hard whether I can swallow it or not a few more days will decide for if it is done at all it has to be done between now and the fifth of next month so perhaps the next time you hear from me I may be a veteran volunteer and I may not I can’t tell tonight that is certain. – Letter from George Gould to his sister, December 29, 1863, Newport News VA


Letter 109

Dear Brother:In the first place have you given your heart to God and do you trust to Him for guidance and eternal life if so then you are prepared to enter upon [sic] the new year with joy and whatever happens it will be a happy new year to you but if on the other hand you care for none of these things then are you wretched indeed. It is just six years ago tomorrow since I experienced religion and though I have not always lived as I ought to yet I can say that they have been the happiest years of my life and I can say my dear Brother that you will never regret it if you will only give your heart to God. then let sickness or death come you will be happy if it had not been for that I should have been the most miserable of all beings but that has sustained me to all my trials and afflictions and I can look forward with the eye of faith to the time when I shall be reunited with her that is gone before. – Letter from George Gould to his brother, December 31, 1863, Newport News VA


Letter 110

Dear Sister:I received your letter yesterday and was glad to hear from you once more but am sorry to hear that Mother is still sick though I hope she is a good deal better now. My health is very good now and I have reenlisted for the term of three years longer unless sooner discharged and expect to start for home tomorrow or next day and I shall make my appearance before you at no distant day and then I will give you my reasons for the course I have taken till then good bye. Please give my love to Father and Mother and Brothers and receive a large share yourself. Please excuse haste and tell Mother she must make haste and get well by the time I get home but I must close hoping this will find you all much better I remain your affectionate Brother, G. W. Gould – Letter from George Gould to his sister, February 8, 1864, Newport News VA


Letter 111

Dear Mother:We started from Boston last Wednesday noon and arrived at this place last Saturday night about 6 oclock pretty well tired out and today is the first time we have had shelter that is all of us there being but eight tents for some 75 men some laid out doors and others staid [sic] at the Cavalry quarters I among the rest so I got along very well only the weather is very cold and disagreeable. We have just had orders to be ready for a march at a minutes notice with one hundred rounds of cartridges but where we are going I don’t know but such is the fortunes of war. – Letter from George Gould to his mother, March 29, 1864, Camp Wellington, near Portsmouth VA


Letter 112

Dear Mother:I have been in three engagements where the shots and shells blew pretty fast we have lost quite a number in killed and wounded there have been two killed and a number wounded in our company . . . When I look forward to the future and think where this will all end it looks dark and gloomy and God only knows whether my life will be spared to ever return I sometimes think I have seen my children for the last time on earth and you all but remember there is a better land above where I hope to meet you all. it seems hard to leave my little ones to the cold charities of the world but I trust God will raise up friends that will protect them and in that belief I commend them to the care of the Almighty God and resign myself to his will. – Letter from George Gould to his mother, May 15, 1864, no location specified


Letter 113

Dear Mrs. Gould:I have sad news for you. Your son George W. Gould was killed and left on the battlefield during a furious charge on a rebel work yesterday morning. We were repulsed & it was impossible to bring his body off of the field. The enclosed diary was in his breast pocket &it tells where the ball hit him. He was a good soldier always doing his duty. You have the consolation that he was a christian soldier too & has only gone before. The diary was taken from his pocket by Sgt. Spalding of Co. F Yours with a brother Soldiers Sympathy – Letter to George Gould’s mother from John Simonds, Commissary Sergeant, June 4th 1864, In the field near Gains Mills

Who Was George W. Gould? Part III George W. Gould was thirty-one years old when he was killed at the Battle of Cold Harbor on June 3,

1864. The 25th Massachusetts suffered a staggering 69% casualty toll that day: 215 men fell out of 310 on the

field and 74 of those died, including George Gould. The photograph below depicts Union remains at Cold Harbor.

Stan Prager was so touched by reading this small handful of letters by George W. Gould – someone who died fighting for the preservation of the Union nearly a century before he was born – that he determined to share them. Resurrecting lost voices like these includes an obligation to let many others hear them. And George’s letters, although only a tiny microcosm of the Civil War experience, represent for us a very critical one, especially because he was such an ordinary man and like many ordinary Americans sacrificed their lives for the United States. I launched this website in his honor on Memorial Day 2016, nearly 152 years after his death.

Who Was George W. Gould? Part IV The body of George W. Gould was disinterred and

returned to Massachusetts, where he was buried with Almira in Paxton MA. His children were left orphans.

Ada L. Gould (1855-1872) died at seventeen years old, most likely in a Worcester orphanage, and was buried near her parent’s grave.

Cora M. Gould (1859-1897) was raised by the executer of her father’s estate, George S. Bond. Her second marriage was to James McKinstry, a fellow soldier who appears to have served in the Mass 25th along with her father. She survived him only a short time and died at thirty-eight years old. She and McKinstry were buried at the Bond family plot in Leicester.

Clarra Etta Gould (1857-1920), whom George called Etta, was adopted by Charles & Sarah Hatch and renamed Nellie Elizabeth Hatch. She married Stillman Moulton and died his widow, at sixty-two years old, and was buried with him in Worcester. Like her sisters, she left no children so there are no direct descendants of George W. Gould to share these letters with.

Still, the long lost voice of George W. Gould has been resurrected through this website!



D.I.Y Digital ArchivingThe Process …

Scanning: Careful document handling while digitizing Storing: DropboxReading: iPadTranscribing: OCR or Voice Recognition or TypingResearching: Online and On FootSharing: Website Creation

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingScanning

A quality scanner is essential: Mine is the Epson GT-1500Letters were scanned to PDF format

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingStoring

Uploading to cloud storage with services like Dropbox permit you to access your work anywhere from multiple devices and even

share with other researchers.

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingReading

iPad or other tablet works well for reading and examining scans

iPad, shown on copy stand here, makes reading portable and

comfortable

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingTranscribing: OCR

For typed documents, Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

software can transcribe for you, with limitations

ABBYY Finereader is very powerful OCR software that sends the

finished product to Word or to PDF format

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingTranscribing: Voice Recognition

Letters in cursive do not work with OCR. Dragon voice recognition

software is an alternative to typing, with limitations

Wearing headset, with PDF open on iPad on copy stand, or split-screen

on PC, you dictate & Dragon transcribes into Word

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingTranscribing: Proofreading

Proofreading is essential whether you use OCR or voice recognition.

Do not trust technological results to be 100%

Use [SIC] to designate spelling errors from the original document,

[brackets are also useful for explanatory notes]

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingResearch: Online & On Foot I

Online: the web has revolutionized research. I utilized an online database to locate George W.

Gould’s grave

On foot: I then drove to Center Cemetery in Paxton MA &

photographed his grave and those of his relatives.

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingResearch: Online & On Foot II

Online: Inquiry on Facebook to G.A.R. for City of Worcester

located a plaque in Leicester MA memorializing Gould

On foot: I then drove to the Leicester Town Hall &

photographed this plaque which was once housed in a G.A.R. Hall

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingSharing: Website Creation I

WordPress is an excellent option for creating a free web page for sharing your research for public

access

Premium sites are $99/annually, are rich with additional features and permit you to link site with a

unique purchased URL

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingSharing: Website Creation II

All kinds of content can be added, includingart, photos, PDFs, linksand embedded videos. Itis easy to create separatepages and to index these.A website is always awork-in-progress. It canand should be edited andupdated with new data,content and analysis.Share link to your sitewith other researchers.

Adding a “Blog” can enhance your site

D.I.Y Digital ArchivingSharing: Website Creation III

WordPress includes the facility to track the visitors to your website by geography, source and specific pages visited by day, week and month. Visitors can also “like” your site, comment and contact you with additional information. Social networking links can also be added, as well as a variety of widgets and other enhancements. Caution: don’t make your site too “busy” with flashy components. Keep it clean and simple and highlight your content. Share your site by email, on social networking, on academic webpages and anywhere that will encourage more visitors with research similar to your own. If you are lucky, you will obtain new information on your subject from visitors that you attract.

About the Author Stan Prager has spent a lifetime studying history and

much of his professional life in the technology arena. Stan’s current focus is on the marriage of history and technology. Stan has an online profile at www.stanprager.com

Stan has a M.A. Public History from APUS, with a focus upon digitization

Stan is owner and president of GoGeeks Computer Rescue, a computer services company in East Longmeadow. More info at www.gogeeks.com

Stan also launched a new venture, Digital Archive Solutions, to offer onsite grant-friendly digital archiving services tailored to small institutions that lack the requisite resources to facilitate their own digitization goals. More info at www.digitalarchivesolutions.org

Stan serves as technology consultant and appears weekly on a “Tech Tips” segment on Western Mass News television

Stan authors a book blog of reviews & essays at www.regarp.com

Stan plans to continue to research and augment the materials at www.resurrectinglostvoices.com

http://www.stanprager.com/

http://www.gogeeks.com/

http://www.digitalarchivesolutions.org/

http://www.regarp.com/

http://www.resurrectinglostvoices.com/

www.resurrectinglostvoices.com Special thanks to Morgan Kolakowski for sharing the letters of George

W. Gould


D.I.Y. Digital Archiving Stan Prager, M.A. Public History

Presentations & Public Speaking

“Resurrecting Lost Voices: DIY Digital Archiving” PowerPoint Presentation