Prisoners huddled in small, makeshift tents, exposed to the elements. The air stunk of dirty bodies, waste, and disease. Many of the captured Union soldiers were wounded, or sick, but there was no medical care and hardly any food or clean water. People died every day. The Confederate Prison in Andersonville, Georgia was not a place a Union soldier wanted to end up, but it was where Oscar F. Davis was trapped for seven months.

Ransom Slack

A fierce wind blew, causing the valiant sailors aboard USS Vermont to shudder. As orders were made and sails were drawn, every man stood his ground, doing all that he could to keep the ship upright. In the midst of this chaos was Thomas S. Clough.

When I first visited Sydney Austin’s grave in the summertime, I noticed that the American flag planted in the moist ground at the base of his tombstone canted to one side, partially obscuring the writing on his tomb. The flag was bright, clean and new. It seemed that someone was taking care of his final resting place.

The next thing I noticed was the epitaph, worn from years of weather: "His life work is finished, his labors are o’er. His country can claim him a soldier no more.” Sydney Austin labored both before and during the war, but his “life work” was cut dramatically short. Such a strange epitaph for a young man who died not more than four months from the time of his enlistment, at the age of only twenty-two.

Sydney O. Austin was a farmhand for Irwin and Mary Pierce of Thetford, Vermont, before enlisting with the army in August of 1861. The Pierces also employed a servant – Abagail Gilman. She was 42 at the time of the 1860 census.

THIS IS A NEW SITE. YOUR OLD SITE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED CAN BE ACCESSED (nothing can be written on it) at richmondms.ywpschools.net

Young Writers Project is excited to be working with you in the coming year. This site has undergone a few changes since last year:

• Teachers can now grade individual posts and comments.
• Teachers can leave private 'annotations' on student posts that only the student author can see.
• Images can be placed inside the text of a post.
• A new editor, spell checker and a few other changes make the site move more quickly.
• Coming soon: The ability to directly record a podcast to a post rather than having to go through an audio editor.

Additionally, YWP has expanded its staffing to add four teacher coaches who will work with schools during the year:  Darcie Jensvold Abbene, Nick Brooks, Cindy Faughnan and Kathy Folley, all veteran teachers who've worked extensively with digital classrooms. MJ Bouvier, meanwhile, is YWP's new Web coordinator and will be available for any kind of technical help. Her phone is 802-324-9538.

Cindy Faughnan is your school's Teacher Coach. Get with her soon to arrange time for her to come in and work with you.

STUDENTS: While this is a 'school' project, we hope you will use this space to share your ideas, creativity and work. As with all YWP projects -- and your school -- there is one primary rule: Be civil and respectful. You are also encouraged to participate in youngwritersproject.org or respond to the prompts on that site for potential publication in newspapers around the state or on Vermont Public Radio.

NOTE to TEACHERS:  Please send us an Excel spread sheet of ALL students with three columns: Firstname | Lastname | Grade. Send that spread sheet to ggevalt@youngwritersproject .org AND mjbouvier@youngwritersproject.org THANKS!

You will be setting up your own digital classrooms and adding students to each appropriate space. This is very easy to do and is probably easier than trying to send us your class lists in the proper form. In the HELP section, you will see information on how to a) Set up your individual classrooms and b) to add student members to the classroom.

Cincy and I are available if you get stuck.

-- Geoffrey Gevalt, YWP Director, 802-324-9537