Earl B. McElfresh (St. Lawrence University) is the author of Sidereal Days, The History of Rock & Roll, A Romance (Tammy Norie Press e-book 2012,) Maps and Mapmakers of the Civil War (Abrams, 1999) and contributing editor to Company Commander by Charles B. MacDonald (History Book Club, 2007.) He is a regular contributor of Civil War articles to Civil War Times Magazine.
He has spoken on Civil War mapping at The Smithsonian, The National Archives, The Library of Congress, The New York Public Library, The Boston Public Library, The Newberry Library, The Harvard Map Collection, The Warburg Institute in London, National Geographic and on C-Span Book TV.
His plays Marvels of Modern Man and Amid Planetary Music were performed at St. Lawrence University. His play Honor Luck received a reading at the New Phoenix Theater in Buffalo. His screenplay Lazy Eye was filmed and premiered at the New School in New York.
Cartographer for McElfresh Map Company LLC, he has prepared twenty-three maps. Twenty of the maps have been main or featured selections of History Book Club. He is currently preparing endpaper maps for the four volume Civil War set being being published by Library of America and entitled The Civil War: Told by Those Who Lived It.
He served two years in Olean (NY) city government on the Common Council—a great experience—and he played rhythm guitar with the band The Fabtones. The cabaret laws of New York City pretty much restricted their playing to the wonderfully hospitable streets of New York City.
He and his wife Michiko have three children and a cat. Like Roger Miller’s King of the Road, they have no pool.
Military maps are not like civilian road maps which merely outline a transportation network. Military maps encompass a complete inventory of the topography of the geographic areas an army might march through or fight over.
The two articles in this symposium describe in great detail how maps were prepared, used and what effect maps, or lack of maps, had on Civil War campaigns and battles.
Maps & the engineers that made them performed some of the most crucial tasks of the Civil War. The mapmakers & their maps are often overlooked, but they could make the difference between a successful campaign & a lost battle. These are the men that commanders paid close attention to even if history has not. This symposium will introduce the reader to Jed Hotchkiss, Leon Fremaux, and John S. Clark.
Two articles:
"Since I Came to This Place" describes President Lincoln's White House Office.
The second article describes Francis Carpenter's famous painting. All of the items shown in the painting, from the pictures on the wall to the papers on the floor, have some significance in relation to the preparation and presentation of the Emancipation Proclamation. Nothing is incidental.
Meet the Sparrows…and Bo Diddley, the Cookies, Patsy Cline, Bob Dylan, Ed Sullivan, the Beatles and more as they navigate through their Sidereal Days in the early ‘60s, writing, recording and performing their rock and roll music.
Sidereal Days The History of Rock and Roll A Romance. Books 1-2-3-4 now complete in one volume.
This second section of A Symposium of Lectures and Articles on Military Mapping describes the logistics and tactics of General U. S. Grant during the Vicksburg campaign and the role that maps played in his maneuvers.
This first section of A Symposium of Lectures and Articles on Military Mapping includes an introduction to the series as well as a description of the efforts by the opposing Confederate and Federal Armies to accurately map the logistically and strategically crucial valley sheltered between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains.