Rosemary Miner

Here is the story of a Confederate Major who built the first suspension bridge across the Hudson River in 1871. How and why a Southerner came to the Adirondacks only a year after Appomatox to build a bridge, who he was and what happened to him, is recounted in The Life and Times of Robert Cogdell Gilchrist: Adirondack Bridgebuilder from Charleston.

Bridging the Huson, inviting former enemies from the Confederacy and Union to march together -- this son of a Yankee mother and Charleston father, was both literally and metaphorically -- a Bridgebuilder -- until now overlooked in the history books.

General Beauregaard, the great antebellum lawyer Petigru, railroad baron Dr. Durant, Teddy Roosevelt -- all had some connection to Major Gilchrist. Inside Fort Wagner in 1863 when the suicidal attacks came (as see in the movie “Glory”), Gilchrist survived to write his own vivid account of those bloody days. Author, antebellum aristocrat, military officer, bridgebuilder -- this is a 19th century man’s story.