The Rogersville Depot Museum will host a lecture on May 9 featuring Jack Brubaker, author of “Sons of East Tennessee: Civil War Veterans Divided and Reconciled.”
The book focuses on two Hawkins County families and their experiences during and after the Civil War.
A meeting with Brubaker begins at 6 p.m., followed by the conference which begins at 6:30 p.m.
The Rogersville Depot (aka Tennessee Newspaper & Printing Museum) is located at 401 S. Depot Street at the intersection of Broadway Street at the corner of Rogersville City School Street.
Synopsis of the book
Two aging Civil War veterans mourned the deaths of their sons at a joint funeral at Knoxville National Cemetery in 1899. One father, General Reuben Bernard, had fought for the Union; the other, Dr. William McCorkle, had served as surgeon, with the rank of major, of a Confederate cavalry regiment.
They first met at the graves of their sons, Army lieutenants and University of Tennessee graduates, killed together in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Americans reading newspaper accounts saw the meeting of the fathers as a prime example of reconciliation between veterans.
Other books have provided comprehensive reviews of veteran reconciliation. It is the first book to focus on specific veterans of opposing armies as the core of a study of the process of reconciliation.
The fact that both families lived in Hawkins County, East Tennessee, a section hard-fought by the Civil War, makes their story’s contribution to the overall examination of reconciliation all the more compelling.
About Jack Brubaker
Jack Brubaker writes a weekly column exploring the area’s history and culture for LNP, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania daily newspaper. He is a retired investigative journalist for LNP.
He has written seven books, including Down the Susquehanna to the Chesapeake (Penn State Press, 2002) and Massacre of the Conestogas (The History Press, 2010). He is a regular contributor to Pennsylvania Heritage magazine.
During the 1970s, Brubaker and his wife, Christine, lived in Danville. Brubaker was a journalist and later editor of the Danville Register. Christine Conant Brubaker was Dean of Students at the former Stratford College. Brubaker was a founding member of the Danville Historical Society.
The Brubakers live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
