Ω Biography Forum Discussion & Thanks

My staff of biography writers is very small right now if you think you might have what it takes to write biographies for others to enjoy please step forward. I will be more then happy to help you with a template or you can come up with one of your own. Also we need a photographer for grave pictures if you love to take pictures and always wanted to help the site step forward we could use your help. We currently need photographers and writers from everywhere. If your interested in joining the crew we would love to have you. This would be a big help to me.
 
Just to add to gentlemanrob's post...

If you are someone who just likes to do research! You can search for and find 60 to 80% of what's needed, and just insert it into our pre-formatted template! You don't need to be super creative per say to find a birthdate or the location of a cemetery.

If you know how to use Google to search, or if you have ancestry tools at your disposal, you might be a big help!

If that's something you would enjoy doing, you can help with that too!
 
Is anyone allowed to just write a biography summary and post it in this forum or do we need special permission?
As long as you are generally following our format, and you are okay with someone coming along at a later date and adding to or improving your bio with additional information, sure, you can add your own. Although it would be good to give us a heads up, we have quite a few bios already in our pipeline, no need to duplicate work :smile:
 
There are plenty of bios to go around, if you want, I can add you to our editing group, we have a forum you can test in, and I've setup some guidelines for profiles and such....
 
@privateflemming @Texas Johnny or any other member...

I'm wondering if either of you, or anyone else who reads this, are interested in attempting a small project today. We are looking for a biography page for George Armstrong Custer, it doesn't have to be exactly in the format we currently are doing our profiles in, but if you want to try and tackle this today, that would be great.

It's his birthday today, and I thought we already had his profile, and until I went searching for it and couldn't find it.

If neither of you can do that today, or it's just not something you have interest in doing, that's fine too.

And in any event, if either of you want to do a biography profile on CivilWarTalk for someone you are interested in, please let me know, I'll add the name to our master list, so we don't do duplicate work, and if you have any questions, or need any help, I'm available to answer questions daily.

The CivilWarTalk Editors Group


If you want access to our special editors group let me know. To be clear, we do more than just edit, we research to find information, we sort through the data we find, remove the information you get in every article or post written for the general public and keep the good stuff that students of the Civil War really want to read about, and then we re-format it and edit it for our profiles.
(Basically our members are like kids who like trail mix, but never want to eat the raisins or dried cranberries. I've made it our job to pick the raisins and dried cranberries out of the trail mix before the members even see it, and we mixed in some extra M&M's to the mix! Our members are thrilled with this! That's the theory anyway!)
We also research to find photos we can legally post, without violating copyright. Public Domain photos from the Civil War era are great! Photos we've taken ourselves are awesome! Government photos, like ones from the National Park Service, or the Library of Congress usually work well. If we ask permission for photos, and get it from the photographer, that's good too.
The editors group works as a team on more than just Biographical Profiles, we also create profiles for Civil War guns and artillery, monuments, historic landmarks and buildings, naval vessels, cemeteries, and more. We can even work in teams on individual profiles and collaborate on projects if we want.
Let me know if you want to go this extra mile and be an Editor!
Oh, and if you ever need help formatting a post, just let me know, I probably understand the post editing / formatting system better than anyone else.

Anyway, have a good day!
 
Your readers might find General Thomas Sweeny interesting. I believe after the war he lead the Fenian raid into Canada.

John
 
My staff of biography writers is very small right now if you think you might have what it takes to write biographies for others to enjoy please step forward. I will be more then happy to help you with a template or you can come up with one of your own. Also we need a photographer for grave pictures if you love to take pictures and always wanted to help the site step forward we could use your help. We currently need photographers and writers from everywhere. If your interested in joining the crew we would love to have you. This would be a big help to me.
I love taking pictures so i would love to assist in anything needed, just let me know whats needed and i will take care of it. My husband @16thAL and his aunt are currently working on writing a biography of a section of thier family but said he would be more than happy to help in any way he can.
 
Have you always wanted to be a civil war writer but don't know where to start?
Do you want to try your skills at writing?
!!Join the Editor Corps!!

We are currently seeking writers for the following:
1. Civil War Inventors
2. Civil War Naval Officers
3. Civil War Nurses and Doctors
 
If you examine my posts, you will see that I have a professional background in graphic design & writing. I also have been studying the Civil War as an amateur historian since 1972. I volunteer at Stones River National Battlefield. I have researched & written about a dozen programs for presentation to visitors. I am a speaker for Civil War Roundtables & schools. I have a wide ranging, eclectic interest in the people who lived during the Civil War period. In particular, the artillery, Sanitary Commission, Signal Corps & riverine naval campaigns.

How does this work? Do you all act as editors & send out assignments to write on certain individuals? How many words do you want?

Do you all want interesting individuals & out of the bracket topics? I noticed that you do not have Signal Corps personal on your list. There are some real characters there. One of them invaded Great Britain after the Civil War. There is a sergeant assigned to the Army of the Cumberland's topographical until who was remarkable influential, his name appears in the credit line on the maps, who is worth hearing about.

Anyways, I would enjoy doing research on individuals & writing bios for the Forum. I figured out what happened during the battles long ago, so this is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy looking in to. All I ask is that the parameters & rules be clearly stated. I have been a professional far too long to really much care what the rules are. However, I do expect them to be explicit.

If it is grave site photos you are after, here is the last resting place of General Cheatham's horse Old Isham. After the war, the General retired Isham in a paddock next to the road. Veterans passing by would recognize the horse & stop to pet him. After his passing, Old Isham was buried here. You will note the proper battle flag, no suspender flag here.

IMG_5416.jpg


IMG_5417.jpg


photos by the author
 
Last edited:
If you examine my posts, you will see that I have a professional background in graphic design & writing. I also have been studying the Civil War as an amateur historian since 1972. I volunteer at Stones River National Battlefield. I have researched & written about a dozen programs for presentation to visitors. I am a speaker for Civil War Roundtables & schools. I have a wide ranging, eclectic interest in the people who lived during the Civil War period. In particular, the artillery, Sanitary Commission, Signal Corps & riverine naval campaigns.

How does this work? Do you all act as editors & send out assignments to write on certain individuals? How many words do you want?

Do you all want interesting individuals & out of the bracket topics? I noticed that you do not have Signal Corps personal on your list. There are some real characters there. One of them invaded Great Britain after the Civil War. There is a sergeant assigned to the Army of the Cumberland's topographical until who was remarkable influential, his name appears in the credit line on the maps, who is worth hearing about.

Anyways, I would enjoy doing research on individuals & writing bios for the Forum. I figured out what happened during the battles long ago, so this is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy looking in to. All I ask is that the parameters & rules be clearly stated. I have been a professional far too long to really much care what the rules are. However, I do expect them to be explicit.

If it is grave site photos you are after, here is the last resting place of General Cheatham's horse Old Isham. After the war, the General retired Isham in a paddock next to the road. Veterans passing by would recognize the horse & stop to pet him. After his passing, Old Isham was buried here. You will note the proper battle flag, no suspender flag here.

View attachment 339392

View attachment 339391

photos by the author
So, I would say we’ve been following more of a method than a set of rules. That’s not to say anything goes, but we discuss what bios we plan to do and move forward.

We have an editors group. It’s primarily Gentlemanrob and myself. We do bios, but I also do profiles of many other things too, so you aren’t limited to bios, we have a weapons section, landmarks and monuments, and I’d like to branch out into books, documents, publications, speeches and music at some point, but we aren’t there yet.

So our method, at this time, is to build up a profile from birth to death, listing every fact figure and interesting tid-bit we can find on that person. This can include media like signatures, photos, documents, newspaper clippings, obituaries, and more.

Then the idea has been to go back, and write a biography to go with the profile.

I have preferred to have an opening paragraph above the profile.

Then below the profile, tell the story of that person or thing in chapters, using new posts as needed. Bios may span many multiple posts if needed. I can reorder the posts if they get out of order, or if you need more posts than you expected.

Quotes, interesting facts, lists, & photos can and should all play a part. Sidebar style stories are also possible!

Anyone can go ahead and submit a biography, I would again prefer to know who you plan to submit in advance, we already have our own list and don’t want to do double the work for no reason.

You can also volunteer to update one of the existing bios to fix it, add to it, or improve it in some way! It is possible to edit other members posts, and you can make notes about who added what content to a post, making a single post a team effort. Rob and I collaborate frequently to get profiles posted.

Just ask if you would like access, I think Rob is comfortable with my editing, but we may need to try that out to see how we feel about it. Some stuff might be off limits, other stuff could be fair game.

I think the Abraham Lincoln post is a fair representation of the direction we would like to see the bios go, although, again, it doesn’t have a full written out bio, and that might make you a good fit for our team.


Do you want to write biographies, or create profiles? Or you can do both if you like!
 
So, I would say we’ve been following more of a method than a set of rules. That’s not to say anything goes, but we discuss what bios we plan to do and move forward.

We have an editors group. It’s primarily Gentlemanrob and myself. We do bios, but I also do profiles of many other things too, so you aren’t limited to bios, we have a weapons section, landmarks and monuments, and I’d like to branch out into books, documents, publications, speeches and music at some point, but we aren’t there yet.

So our method, at this time, is to build up a profile from birth to death, listing every fact figure and interesting tid-bit we can find on that person. This can include media like signatures, photos, documents, newspaper clippings, obituaries, and more.

Then the idea has been to go back, and write a biography to go with the profile.

I have preferred to have an opening paragraph above the profile.

Then below the profile, tell the story of that person or thing in chapters, using new posts as needed. Bios may span many multiple posts if needed. I can reorder the posts if they get out of order, or if you need more posts than you expected.

Quotes, interesting facts, lists, & photos can and should all play a part. Sidebar style stories are also possible!

Anyone can go ahead and submit a biography, I would again prefer to know who you plan to submit in advance, we already have our own list and don’t want to do double the work for no reason.

You can also volunteer to update one of the existing bios to fix it, add to it, or improve it in some way! It is possible to edit other members posts, and you can make notes about who added what content to a post, making a single post a team effort. Rob and I collaborate frequently to get profiles posted.

Just ask if you would like access, I think Rob is comfortable with my editing, but we may need to try that out to see how we feel about it. Some stuff might be off limits, other stuff could be fair game.

I think the Abraham Lincoln post is a fair representation of the direction we would like to see the bios go, although, again, it doesn’t have a full written out bio, and that might make you a good fit for our team.


Do you want to write biographies, or create profiles? Or you can do both if you like!
I can do either as the opportunity presents itself. What do you have in mind?
 
Oh, I saw you asked how many words for a bio, I would say a Brigadier Gen would be 1000 words easy, Lincoln should probably take 5 posts in chapter form.

I think our members are interested in their life before the war, particularly if they were at a military academy or participating in a war before the Civil War, but really concentrate on the Civil War years. After the war you can touch on their careers and life, I’m not suggesting leaving important stuff out, but focus on the Civil War.
 
I can do either as the opportunity presents itself. What do you have in mind?
So, then, I suggest giving us the names of two individuals, pick someone in artillery and another in the signal corps, and have at it, see what you come up with.

If you want us to do a profile for your individuals, we can.
 
Back
Top