Description: An important and little-known chapter of Michigan's Civil War history, drawn from the letters, diaries, and regimental records of the First Michigan Engineers and Mechanics regiment.
Review Quotes:
In My Brave Mechanics, genealogist Mark Hoffman offers readers an extremely detailed and updated account of the First Michigan Engineers and Mechanics, utilizing a vast array of primary sources, including unpublished letters and dairies, regimental newspapers, period newspapers and postwar recollections. The author also does an admirable job of describing where these engineers hailed from, including analyzing their average ages, prewar occupations and trades, all of which gives a solid statistical portrait of who exactly there skilled laborers were. Hoffman has successfully added an important piece to the Civil War's regimental history canon, such that students of the war in the Western Theatre or military engineering in general will want to add My Brave Mechanics to their libraries.
-- "Civil War News"