Dudley Landon Vaill

Born in Winsted, Connecticut, on August 30, 1873, Dudley Landon Vaill was educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Yale in 1896. After college he joined George Dudley and Son, a leather manufacturing firm in Winsted, and later became its treasurer.

Vaill is remembered as the author of The County Regiment, a 1908 history of the Second Regiment of Connecticut Volunteer Heavy Artillery, originally the Nineteenth Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War. His surviving papers at Yale suggest a lifelong connection to the university and to alumni life; he served as secretary of the Yale class of 1896 from 1916 until his death.

He died in 1967. Although not a widely known literary figure today, his work remains valuable for readers interested in Civil War history, Connecticut, and the kind of careful local research that preserves stories larger histories can miss.