New Jersey Goes to War: Biographies of 150 New Jerseyans Caught Up in the Struggle of the Civil War

Joseph G. Bilby, editor of the recently published New Jersey Goes to War: Biographies of 150 New Jerseyans Caught Up in the Struggle of the Civil War, including Soldiers, Civilians, Men, Women, Heroes, Scoundrels – and a Heroic Horse, will present a PowerPoint program based on the book. New Jersey Goes to War contains biographies of a compelling cross-section of New Jersey’s Civil War generation, both famous and obscure, whose lives were affected by the conflict and the events surrounding it. Mr. Bilby will tell the stories of such colorful and varied personalities as eccentric airship inventor Solomon Andrews, courageous nurse Cornelia Hancock, who was initially thought too pretty to care for wounded soldiers, Lieutenant Alexander Hamilton, a scoundrel who absconded with Jersey City’s treasury after the war, J. Madison Drake of Elizabeth, who won the Medal of Honor, and First Sergeant George Ashby, an African-American soldier who, when he died in 1946, was the last surviving New Jersey Civil War veteran. The program is sponsored by the Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee of the Cranford Historical Society and the Cranford Public Library. Funding for the program was made possible by a HEART Grant from the Union County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs.