The origin for this site was a class assignment created by Sarah Fatherly for her course on the U.S. Civil War. She taught this course from 2001 to 2011.
Undergraduate students began the work of reconstructing the personal lives and war records of the veterans memorialized on the monument.
Having documented the veterans - with varying degrees of ease - the students wrote short biographies and longer research papers about these soldiers. Longer papers will become available at the College Archives. Below is the initial part of the assignment.
Assignment Prompt
Over the course of the quarter, you will be researching and writing about the experiences of one Otterbein Civil War veteran. As soon as you are assigned your soldier, you can and should get started on the project.
What do I need to find out?
You want to do the best you can to research the individual whom you’ve been assigned. That means first finding out basic information about the person himself--birth date, death date, status at Otterbein (student? faculty? other?), hometown and state. Next, you want to try to track down some of his major movements during the War. What major battles if any was he at; was he wounded, killed, or captured; was his unit known for anything in particular at a certain battle? Finally, assuming you find some rich sources, you will want to explore his attitudes, opinions, and experiences about the War and his role in it.
This 2007 news report introduced by Chelci Fauss-Johnson features an interview of Sarah Fatherly by student reporter Christa Johnston.