Hello group,
I have an audio story to share that requires some setup to appreciate the
importance of the event.
Because of school, it's been some time since I last posted here. I enrolled in
a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program in 2008 and I just completed my
coursework. For my internship, I developed a Google Earth interactive map
depicting three Civil War battles, which occurred during the Battle of Atlanta,
near Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia.
During my internship, I had the pleasure to meet, and work with, local
historian Brad Quinlin (http://www.tolearnyourhistory.com/Home_Page.php). Mr.
Quinlin's quest is to identify all the 243 unknown African-American Civil War
soldiers buried in the Marietta National Cemetery
(http://www.cem.va.gov/cems/nchp/marietta.asp). A daunting task.
On Memorial Day weekend, Mr. Quinlin held a ceremony in the Cemetery to
announce the names of five soldiers that he identified from his research. To
record the event, I used my Marantz PMD201 cassette recorder, an Audio
Technical Pro 24 mic (a stereo-pair mic used in a mono configuration), and a
pair of JVC earbuds. This is prosumer grade at best, but I felt this
configuration would best capture the event and not appear intruding during the
ceremony. As an aside, even though I own an SD 702 recorder, I still rely on my
vintage PMD201 for school and work; and recently, I sent it to SuperScope
Technologies for a major service, so the unit is running to spec.
The recording results of the ceremony are very good. I uploaded the 18-minute
recording to Sony Sound Forge to a 44.1, 16-bit, mono file, edited the file for
content, and then I saved it at 22.050, 16-bit, mono. The 22.050 sampling rate
rendered a smaller file without sacrificing the sound quality too greatly, and
gave me a 6K file that I e-mailed to Mr. Quinlin and other interested
individuals.
Now the important stuff; here are the names of the five named African-Americans
serving during the Civil War:
Charles Ganney, died Aug 6, 1865
Charles Ginny, died ?
Andrew Smith, died Sept. 7, 1865
Frank Williams, died Dec. 28, 1865
Victoria Mays, died Aug 17, 1864
Regards,
Tom
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