At "Field of Fire" near Mabie, West Virginia

A look at mapmaking in the American Civil War. Mapmakers produced many elegant battle maps, drawing after fire had ceased, but also were often in position to "draw fire" themselves.

Many points will be illustrated with excerpts from the remarkable diaries of three able mapmakers : the Confederacy's Jedediah Hotchkiss, the Union's private Robert Knox Sneden, and the Union's David Hunter Strother (the writer "Porte Crayon").

The seminar will meet in a pavilion within easy walking distance of the Confederate army's Camp Garnett fortification, which was mapped in the summer of 1861 by Jedediah Hotchkiss. Don Teter surveyed that same encampment during the 1990's for the Rich Mountain Battlefield Foundation. The program will include a short presentation on Hotchkiss's work at Camp Garnett and Rich Mountain, and comparisons will be made between the Hotchkiss maps and Don Teter's mapping. A similar comparison will be made for the Union entrenchments at Beverly, which were also mapped by both Hotchkiss and Teter.