January 2019 Program - The Battle of Newport

The Wakulla County Historical Society’s program on Tuesday, January 8, 7:00 p.m. at the Wakulla County Public Library will feature Bill Gauger with a presentation on The Battle of Newport.The Civil War Battle of Natural Bridge March 6th, 1865, at the present day town of Woodville, southeast of Tallahassee, is commemorated by the Natural Bridge Battlefield State Park containing appropriate monuments, and hosts an annual reenactment.  Preceding, overlapping, and extending after the battle, events at Newport on the St Marks River helped determine the Confederate victory. Our speaker, Bill Gauger, will tell us about the little-known, but important role Newport played in the ill-fated Union attempt to invade this part of Florida as the Civil War neared its end.

Bill is a member of the WCHS and participated in our annual Show and Tell program last March showing a Dr. Caldwell’s Pepsin medicine bottle he found in the Ochlockonee River and sharing the story of this company.  He and his wife Maryann currently reside in Morehead City, NC, and enjoy spending their winters in their 5th wheel here in the Panhandle. He and Maryann both took early retirement from the Lee County, FL school system in 1999.  Bill's interest in history, particularly Civil War history, goes back to childhood. He has an extensive Civil War library, collects Civil War artifacts, and has visited most of the major battlefields in the east. He enjoys researching lesser-known Civil War actions.