Feb/March 2006 DAYTON, Ohio - Robert J. "Bob" Younger, who founded Morningside House, a Civil War book publisher, with his wife Mary in 1969, died on Jan. 11.

Bob and Mary, who was Morningside's president and manager, continued active management of the business until his unexpected death from complications after knee replacement surgery.

His associate and friend of more than 40 years, Edwin C. Bearss, calls Younger a "14-carat character." He was a straight-shooter and didn't like BS artists. "If he was a friend he was a friend," says Bearss.

They did business together for 35 years with no contracts. Their relationship was based on the shake of a hand "and believing in the honesty of another person."

Morningside was known for publishing original works and reprinting classics that Bob thought deserved republication. If you were fortunate enough to lend him an original copy to be taken apart for the new printing Bob beautifully bound the original book before returning it.

The Morningside Bookshop catalogs of Civil War books, some of which ran more than 100 pages, were bibliographic references to be saved. Most of the entries were much more than listings of titles, authors and pertinent information.

The catalogs included book reviews, lists of books Morningside wanted to reprint if enough interest was shown, and hundreds of titles from other publishers listed by author.

In Catalog 47 (1999) the Youngers addressed the new era: "As you will soon see, Morningside will no longer be listing the major University and Trade Press books in our catalog. This is due to the fact that you, the customer, can now buy the very same books on-line for the same price that we have been paying. ...

"In order to keep a business afloat, one has to keep up with the trends. So we are reverting back to being primarily a book publisher, and shall be gradually bringing back all of our old reprints and originals, cloth-bound on real acid-free paper."

The concluding paragraph was vintage Bob Younger:

"Morningside Bookshop: Not a .Com Bookstore. When you shop for Civil War books, you will receive personalized treatment and solid advice on whether a certain book is worth the trouble. Many books being published today have not had the benefit of an expert editor - it is a shame that trees were destroyed to print such useless books."

Gettysburg Magazine

Bob Younger was the founder, publisher and editor of The Gettysburg Magazine, an advertising-free publication devoted to Gettysburg scholarship since 1989. He asked Ed Bearss to write the foreword for each issue.

Bearss confesses that he doubted the magazine would have staying power. He told Younger it wouldn't last two years

Early issues set the standard with articles by a who's who of historians including Harry W. Pfanz, Alan Nolan, John D. Pullen, D. Scott Hartwig, Lance J. Herdegen, Terrence J. Winschel and Richard A. Sauers.

Hartwig, who is Supervisory Historian at Gettysburg National Military Park, says, "Who would have dreamed that someone could publish a scholarly magazine on a single battle for over 15 years and maintain any quality? Yet, Bob believed in it and did it."

He says: "Bob Younger will be missed. Thousands of Civil War students and enthusiasts have him to thank for reprinting books from the period that most publishers would never have risked printing again."

Bachelder Papers

One of Bob Younger's major contributions to Gettysburg study was the first publication of the Gettysburg battle history and papers of John B. Bachelder, who spent 31 years studying and documenting the battle. He was commissioned by the War Department to produce the work, which was never published.

Morningside published Bachelder's History of the Battle of Gettysburg and three volumes of The Bachelder Papers, edited by David and Audrey Ladd, that included Bachelder's correspondence with veterans on both sides.

The project'spiˆ®ce de rˆ©sistance was the publication of Bachelder's maps - 28 of them in full color on acid-free paper. Here Bachelder recorded everything from troop positions at various points in the battle to houses, woods and property lines.

Dean Shultz of Gettysburg, a historian of the battlefield in his own right, and an associate editor of The Gettysburg Magazine, says, "One of the best things he did for Gettysburg was find the Bachelder map series and publish it."

Shultz learned first-hand that Younger knew the battlefield intimately. "Last summer we were driving around the battlefield and he was pointing out all the places he had stomped over the years and describing the action that occurred there. He knew the battle!" says Shultz.

Morningside Books

It would be nearly impossible not to have some Morningside books in a Civil War collection.

"People will miss him in the future because of his publication program," says Bearss. " His work is all but unprecedented, bringing back books out of print that were invaluable to Civil War scholars and buffs."

The reprints ranged from Confederate titles like The Seventh Tenneesee Cavalry, CSA (Young) and History of the 4th Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers (Reid) to Bigelow's The Campaign of Chancellorsville, Gibbon's The Artillerist's Manual and Lincoln Day by Day (Miers).

Younger wasn't satisfied to take the easy way of simply photocopying and reprinting the original book. For years Morningside reset the books it was reprinting. Most, if not all, reprints were enhanced with introductions, indexes, revisions and editing.

Morningside originals include Robert K. Krick's Lee's Colonels: A Biographical Register of the Field Officers of the Army of Northern Virginia, William M. Anderson's They Died to Make Men Free: The 19th Michigan Infantry and Noah Andre Trudeau's Voices of the 55th: Letters from the 55th Massachusetts Volunteers 1861-1865. Silas Felton edited Morningside's volume IV, revised and updated, Dornbusch Military Bibliography of the Civil War - all 1062 pages of it "Set in 8 and 10 point Times New Roman. Notes in 6 point," as the Morningside catalog noted. It brought Dornbusch up to 2001 and added works missing from the three earlier volumes, as well as new sections.

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Robert Younger was born March 18, 1925, on the Younger farm in Saline County, Missouri. His ashes will be buried there in the Witcher Family Cemetery on the Finley/Younger farm. He was related to the Younger brothers who became outlaws after the Civil War, riding with Jesse James.

Younger attended the University of Missouri and served in World War II. He retired in 1982 from McCall's Publishing Company/Dayton Press after 32 years of service. He was a member of the International Typographical Union and the China-Burma-India Veterans Association.

He is survived by his wife, sister Virginia Y. Finley, three nieces and 13 great-nieces and -nephews.

A funeral service was held in Kettering, Ohio, on Jan. 18.

Memorial donations may be made to the charity of one's choice.

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