CHASING GREAT GRANDFATHER

Kyte chronicles the life of her great-grandfather, a farmer who fought in the Civil War.

In 1835, John Henry Austin was born in De Peyster, a small farming town in northern New York. One of six children, John grew up on the farm he would eventually inherit from his father, G.M. Austin, and run alongside his wife, Emma, for almost 30 years. His first vocation, though, was teaching; after graduating from the Wesleyan Seminary, he became a teacher at a local country school. His life took a grim detour when the Civil War broke out. In 1861, he volunteered to fight on the Union side with the 16th Regiment; he was “mustered out of service” in 1863. Austin fought in the Battle of Bull Run, the regiment’s first combat engagement, but he was laconically unwilling to discuss his experience. Still, the author, Austin’s great-granddaughter (and a diligent researcher), found this description of his in a letter: “The day will doubtless be long remembered by the veterans who suffered the long marches through the dust and hot sultry sun, much more than from the effects of wounds, but on the eve after the battle it was well known that there was a general retreat ending in the Union forces occupying nearly the same positions as before.” This is the dramatic high point of the author’s memoir, which is largely a forensically scrupulous accounting of Austin’s quotidian life; Kyte often refers to Austin’s accounting ledger and reports in detail on what he paid for produce, which operas caught his fancy, and the terms of his military pension. The author does succeed in providing a lucid glimpse into a vanished world—Austin represented the seventh (and last) generation of his family to have farmed that land since their settling in the United States some 200 years earlier. For the most part, however, the details she furnishes will only appeal to those who are also among Austin’s descendants.

A well-researched biography best appreciated by those related to its subject.