My friend and associate Chris Williams has a great article running in the Free Lance-Star Town & County today. Chris has been contributing stories all throughout Black History Month and this one presents the African impact on the building of America's economy. (Please disregard the 'double post' of this topic below. It appears to have attached itself to an earlier entry on vandalism. My blog browser crashed while I was submitting my post and I can't seem to delete it). READ HERE

I have spent the last few nights pouring through the 1000-page PDF of our local National Park Service's Bound Volumes catalog. I identified over 140 primary sources for my upcoming book on Confederate encampments in Spotsylvania County. These include orders, letters, diary entries and even camp servant papers. It looks to be a great collection of materials that will make this chronicle a worthy collection of transcripts. I'll be spending many an afternoon up at Chatham with the copying machine. I'd better bring my own packs of paper as the NPS is surely feeling the economic strain too. I love research and this project is going to be a fun one for sure.