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Roll Call at Old Camp Floyd, Utah Territory | 
 enlarge | Author: Roger Nielson
Publisher: Roger Nielson
This item is no longer available
Media: Paperback
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| Customer Reviews:
 Reclaiming the dignity of "dilettantism" December 22, 2007
Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book, laboriously and lovingly researched, written, and self-published by the author, will never have a large audience. I ordered a copy because I'm working on a biography of someone who spent some time at Camp Floyd during the so-called Mormon War of 1857-8. But anyone who has no immediate interest in Utah history or frontier life of the U.S. military in the mid-nineteenth century isn't likely to be interested in Nielson's book.
But the book itself is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is that it really is excellently researched. The "old Camp Floyd" of the title was a temporary one in which General Sidney Johnston and his army sojourned for a few months in 1858 before moving on to the permanent site of Camp Floyd, some 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. Nielson has dug up as much information about the old camp and its inhabitants as a human possibly can: muster lists of the infantry and dragoon regiments and light and heavy artillery batteries as well as information about individual members of each. He also managed to find a bit of information about the hundreds of civilian teamsters, subcontracted by the famous Russell and Waddell Freighting Company (founders of the Pony Express), who worked for the army. All in all, pretty darn impressive.
The second noteworthy feature of the book is that it's a wonderful example of what "amateur" scholars can achieve. Dilettantes, lovers of history, philosophy, art, etc. who dig deeply but not "professionally" into their subjects, were once not only respected but recognized for making great contributions. One has only to remember the amateur British naturalists of the 18th and 19th centuries, many of whom were clergymen, to appreciate this point. In our age of academic professionalism, dilettantism has become a term of reproach. People like author and historian Roger Nielson remind us that it's anything but. Books like his should be celebrated.
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