Monthly Archives: January 2022

Meeting of February 10, 2022

Chris Bagley on “The Horse at Gettysburg: Prepared for the Day of Battle”

Horses are some of the many unsung heroes of the American Civil War. These majestic animals were impressed into service, trained, prepared for battle, and turned into expendable implements of war.
There is more to this story, however. When an army’s means and survival is predicated upon an animal whose instincts are to flee rather than fight, a bond of mutual trust and respect between handler and horse must be forged. Ultimately, the Battle of Gettysburg resulted in thousands of horses killed and wounded. Their story deserves telling, from a time not so far removed.

Chris hails from Canton, Ohio, where he resides with his wife Becky. Chris has been a Registered Nurse for 31 years and currently works as a surgical nurse. He became a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park in 2016. He always had a love and fascination of horses from childhood which continues to this day.

Chris first visited the fields of Gettysburg at the age of ten, and then returned when he was thirty. This led to a lifelong passion for reading, study, and visitation of the field. On one of his many trips, he took a guided tour of the battlefield on horseback. The experience prompted him to prepare and take the examination to become a Licensed Battlefield Guide, which he completed and passed in August of 2016. The first tour he gave was done so on horseback. For the past three years, Chris has conducted tours over the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg National Military Park, but the memory and privilege of riding over the field on horseback further influenced him to study and learn about these animals. He has always loved horses and now is combining the two. Chris is a lifelong native of Canton, Ohio with his wife, Becky.

Meeting of January 13, 2022

Mike Bunn on “The Assault on Fort Blakeley: The Thunder and Lightning of Battle”

On the afternoon of April 9, 1865, some sixteen thousand Union troops launched a bold, coordinated assault on the three-mile-long line of earthworks known as Fort Blakeley. The charge was one of the grand spectacles of the Civil War, the climax of a weeks-long campaign that resulted in the capture of Mobile—the last major Southern city to remain in Confederate hands. Historian Mike Bunn delves into the chaos of those desperate moments along the waters of the storied Mobile–Tensaw Delta, and also serves as a guided tour of Alabama’s largest Civil War battlefield.

Mike Bunn is an author and historian, and currently serves as Director of Historic Blakeley State Park in Spanish Fort, Alabama. He previously directed the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, a bi-state agency operating in southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia, and worked as a curator with the Columbus, Georgia Museum and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s Museum of Mississippi. He has also worked with the Birmingham Historical Society and the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society.

He is author or coauthor of several books, including Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South during America’s Revolutionary Era; Early Alabama: An Illustrated Guide to the Formative Years, 1798-1826; Alabama From Territory to Statehood: An Alabama Heritage Bicentennial Collection; Well Worth Stopping to See: Antebellum Columbus, Georgia through the Eyes of Travelers; Civil War Eufaula; Battle for the Southern Frontier: The Creek War and the War of 1812; and The Lower Chattahoochee River (Images of America). Mike earned his undergraduate degree at Faulkner University and two master’s degrees at the University of Alabama. He and his wife, Tonya, live in Daphne, Alabama, with their daughter, Zoey. www.mikebunn.net