John Hinman
Meet the author
I was born in Syracuse, NY in 1958, but as a young boy, my father moved the family to Huntsville, Alabama. I grew up through most of the sixties in Alabama, which may account for my interest in history.
My interest in the Civil War can be traced back to two books: Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt and The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. When my father moved the family to Pennsylvania in the early seventies, I was in the same state as my favorite battle to read about – Gettysburg.
I graduated from Edinboro State University with a degree in teaching English. I was torn between studying English or history, but at the time I was in college, teaching jobs in English were more plentiful than history. I learned that to teach a lot of novels that my students needed to understand the history of the period that they were written in.
Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels influenced me in writing about Gettysburg. He took a historic event and made it into historic fiction. When I was teaching seventh graders, the history teacher taught American History and at some points the Civil War. I wrote my first book True Heroes of Gettysburg to help teach my students about this battle and to back up my history teacher. In my novel, the protagonist, Darrell Stauffer, runs away to Gettysburg to become a great war hero. When he sees the action on the first day, he realizes that war is more brutal than he ever realized. He ends up helping out in the ambulance corps that brought wounded soldiers from the battlefield to field hospitals. One comment that I received about my book that particularly made me happy was that students and parents that read my book commented on how I made the Civil War easy to understand. I did book signings at the Visitor Center Bookstore at the Gettysburg battlefield every year. I had fun signing books and talking Civil War.
I retired from teaching in 2020. That had always been the year that I wanted to retire, but the onset of the Coronavirus disease helped to make sure that I wouldn’t go back on my commitment.
In retirement, I began to look at the one person that had a big influence on the Union victory at Gettysburg but was mostly overlooked – Col. Strong Vincent. I live in Erie. Pennsylvania. This is where he grew up. Vincent was born in Waterford, Pa, but at an early age, his father moved his family to Erie. In Erie, there is a middle school named after Strong Vincent and a statue of him graces an area outside of Erie’s main library building. I spent a lot of time in my research of Strong Vincent’s life. I felt comfortable writing my novel, Strong Vincent: A Call to Glory, as a historic novel to make Strong’s character come to life. I had historians check my information to make sure that it was correct. I really wanted to honor this person who had no military experience before enlisting, but he took it upon himself to defend one of the key positions in the Union defense. If people know anything about Little Round Top, most know about Joshua Chamberlain. His twentieth Maine regiment made a historic stand on the left end of the hill, but he wouldn’t have ever been in position to defend it if it was not for Strong Vincent placing his soldiers there. I hope that you read my novel to learn about a great hero that many people don’t know about.