John Mead Gould

Born in 1839 and dying in 1930, he was a Portland, Maine, veteran, banker, and diarist whose writing grew directly out of his Civil War service. Maine Memory Network describes him as a Portland native who spent most of his working life as a banker, stayed active in veterans' groups, and continued keeping a diary throughout his life.

He is best known for History of the First-Tenth-Twenty-ninth Maine Regiment, published in 1871 and based on the diary he kept during the war. Sources available here identify him as having served in the Union Army and later as major of the 29th Maine, which helps explain the book's close attention to the daily experience of soldiers as well as major campaigns.

That combination of firsthand memory and careful record-keeping gives his work its lasting appeal. Rather than writing from a distance, he wrote as someone who had marched, watched, and remembered, making his history especially engaging for listeners interested in Civil War lives on the ground.