Clarence Woodcock, owner of CW Publications, saw that article and kindly lent me a copy of the CD-ROM disk so that I could see for myself. I can now report that, indeed, this is an electronic reprint of Horace H. Shaw and Charles J. House’s book printed in 1903. In addition, there is a new Introduction by Joseph G. Bilby.

The First Maine Heavy Artillery CD-ROM is created entirely in HTML format. The CD-ROM producers say it will work on a modern Windows Web browser. I used it on a Windows XP system with Internet Explorer and it worked well. I also tried it on a Linux system running both Konquerer (a Linux Web browser) and Netscape. It worked perfectly on Linux as well. I suspect that the same CD-ROM will also work on a Macintosh system although I did not have an opportunity to try that.

The First Maine Heavy Artillery was printed as a very thick book of 557 pages and contains a wealth of information. It starts with a brief history of the United States with numerous references to slavery. It then goes on to talk about the early days of the U.S. Civil War and the raising of a heavy artillery regiment in Maine. Every battle is described in detail, as are many stories about training, travel, and the every-day life of a Civil War soldier. The book also includes many photographs and personal recollections written in later years by members of this regiment.

The CD-ROM version of the book includes:

• A complete Regimental Roster, by Company, including many photographs
• A comprehensive listing of Casualties, by battle
• A detailed description of the Regiment's movements and battles
• Commentary by Horace Shaw, Zemro A. Smith, and others regarding the Civil War period and the War
• A description of the formation of the Regiment by Zemro A. Smith
• Photographs of all Regimental Officers - over one hundred photos including seven large double-page pictures
• A comprehensive Index by subject and individual name
• And much more

One item that I particularly enjoyed reading was the "Sketch from the Ranks" written by Thomas G. Libby of Lincoln. He wrote:

I enlisted in the spring of 1862, Company A, at the age of fourteen years, weighed 102 pounds, height 5 feet 3 inches, being one inch less than the required height, secured mother’s consent, father, Thomas S. Libby, having enlisted in the spring of 1861, Company C, 7^th Maine. After receiving advice and assurance from Dr. Wilson, our family physician, that I would not be accepted, mother gave her consent. After having her sign her name to the Government papers I put my age down as sixteen years. I had never been away from home, had never seen a sailing vessel, steamboat or train of cars. ……. Imagine my surprise and wonderment on reaching Bangor to behold such a large city with its vast fleet of vessels, steamers and cars: everything that my eyes beheld was a continual panorama of a new life.

One wonders what else raced through the mind of this fourteen-year-old lad from a small rural community. I also wonder what thoughts his mother had as her fourteen-year-old child marched off to war, a war in which her husband was already a soldier.

Thomas G. Libby’s paperwork later listed his age at enlistment as eighteen, and he wrote that he stuffed cotton batting from his mother’s quilt into his boots to appear to be taller than his 5 feet 3 inches. He writes more about his experiences in the war, both in battle and in camp life. Libby was wounded on June 17, 1864 and eventually discharged on April 21, 1865. The article includes two pictures: one showing the young recruit in a uniform that is obviously too big for his 102-pound body, and a second photograph taken many years later showing a healthy and heavier war veteran.

The above description of an article in the "First Maine Heavy Artillery" CD-ROM was picked at random as an illustration of what is available. There are many, many more such articles in this lengthy work.

The pages of the original printed book have been scanned and saved as images on the CD-ROM disk. The words have not been converted to text by OCR (optical character recognition) or by manually re-typing the information. As a result, it is not possible to search for individual words within the text. However, the table of contents and the back-of-book index both provide links to the appropriate pages. It is easy to look in the index, then find the Surname list, then click on "Surnames E" to look at the first page of a list of all soldiers whose last names started with the letter "E." Each name is shown with the page number from the original printed book where the name appeared. You can type that page number into the "Go To Page #" field, and the appropriate page is displayed on the screen. All in all, I felt this was a rather easy method of navigating through an electronic book.

The "First Maine Heavy Artillery" CD-ROM is an excellent addition to the library of anyone with ancestors in the regiment, as well as being of interest to Civil War history buffs. The men who experienced it provided much of the information on this CD-ROM. The disk is easy to use as well as being easier to store on the bookshelf than the original printed volume. At $31.95 plus shipping, the CD-ROM is also a lot more cost-effective than purchasing the printed book, assuming that you can even find it in a used book store.

More information about "The First Maine Heavy Artillery" CD-ROM may be obtained at the Publisher's Web site: www.cwpublishing.com.

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