VPR Interview about the Col. Addison Preston Collection

Turns out Tik Tok and SnapChat aren’t the only places that Gen Zer’s are spend­ing their time on the inter­net these days.

Col­by Tuller, 15, is a fresh­man at East Montpelier’s U32 High School. He’s also an avowed his­to­ry buff who, while brows­ing an online auc­tion cat­a­log, recent­ly dis­cov­ered a trove of arti­facts that belonged to a Civ­il War offi­cer with Ver­mont ties.

Colonel Addi­son Pre­ston was a mem­ber of the First Ver­mont Cav­al­ry, who’s buried in Danville.

Now, Tuller is part of an effort to raise the rough­ly $27,000 need­ed to bring Preston’s auc­tion col­lec­tion — includ­ing a full uni­form — back to Cale­do­nia County.

That’s along­side the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety and Vermont’s Civ­il War Hem­locks, a group that cel­e­brates that era through demon­stra­tions and bat­tle reenactments.

Ver­mont Pub­lic’s Jenn Jarec­ki caught up with Tuller to learn how the effort’s going. Their con­ver­sa­tion below has been edit­ed and con­densed for clarity.

Jenn Jarec­ki: To start, can you walk us through how you stum­bled upon a host of items for auc­tion that once belonged to Col. Preston?

Col­by Tuller: I’m an avid Civ­il War arti­fact col­lec­tor myself. And I was look­ing through the web­site Horse Sol­dier in Get­tys­burg, which is a mil­i­tary arti­fact store, and I came up across the uni­form of Col. Preston.

And I had searched the word “Ver­mont” just to see, because they update their “What’s New” page every so often. I clicked on it, and I sent it to my group, the Ver­mont Civ­il War Hem­locks. And it was imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous that these items need­ed to be returned to Danville, and Ver­mont itself. I mean, this is a big addi­tion to Ver­mont Civ­il War history.

See the full inter­view HERE.

VPR Inter­view about the Col. Addi­son Pre­ston Col­lec­tion” rel=“nofollow” onclick=” return false;” style=“text-decoration:none; color:#000000; font-size:11px; line-height:20px;”>