Neighbor News
Well Respected Civil War Historian, Lesley Gordon to Speak in Granby
A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut's Civil War
The Salmon Brook Historical Society
Presents
Lesley Gordon, author of
A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut’s Civil War
Wednesday, May 20th, 2015 at 7:00 PM
Granby Senior Center
15 N. Granby Road, Granby, CT
Tickets: Members $3, Non-Members $5, Students $2
Proceeds to benefit The Salmon Brook Historical Society of Granby
Light Refreshments Included
A Broken Regiment recounts the history of the Union Army’s 16th Connecticut
Volunteer Infantry. Organized in the late summer of 1862, the unit was
unprepared for battle when, only a month after its formation, it entered the fight at
Antietam. The results were catastrophic, with nearly a quarter of the men killed or
wounded, while the rest fled the field, participating in minor skirmishes before
surrendering in North Carolina in 1864. Most of its members spent months in
southern prison camps, including the notorious Andersonville stockade, where
disease and starvation took the lives of over one hundred members of the unit.
The soldiers in the 16th came from towns all over Connecticut, including Avon,
Barkhamsted, Bloomfield, Canton, East Granby, Farmington, Hartland, Simsbury,
Suffield, and Granby, which provided twenty-one men, who stayed together from
Antietam to Andersonville.
Over time, competing stories emerged as to who and what the men of the 16th
were, and how they should be remembered. A Broken Regiment illuminates the
unit’s complex history, resulting in a fascinating, heartrending, and important
story of one regiment’s wartime and postwar struggles.
Lesley J. Gordon, a graduate of East Granby High School, received her B.A. from the College of
William and Mary, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, and is presently
Professor of History at the University of Akron.
