author
James Madison Stone
1841–1930
A Civil War veteran who later built a career as a painter, he left behind a firsthand memoir that captures army life with unusual immediacy. His life moved between the battlefield, art studios in the United States and Europe, and years of teaching and painting in Massachusetts.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Dana, Massachusetts, on July 30, 1841, James Madison Stone served as a private in the 21st Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. Later in life he wrote Personal Recollections of the Civil War, a memoir first published in 1918, drawing on his own experiences as an ordinary soldier rather than a commanding officer.
Stone was also an artist. Records from the New Hampshire Historical Society describe him as an American painter who studied in New York City and Munich, lived for periods in Europe, and worked as a painter and teacher in Boston, Worcester, and Greenwich, Massachusetts. Auction and museum records also place his work in the late 19th-century American art world.
He died in Beverly, Massachusetts, on October 23, 1930. What makes him especially memorable is the combination of two very different legacies: a soldier's eyewitness account of the Civil War and a long career devoted to painting.