Randee Fieselmann

Randee Fieselmann holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Iowa. Her focus has been on the sociology of knowledge. She taught at the University of Iowa and at Coe College as a visiting assistant professor. For more than thirty years she has belonged to a biography book club. She was researching the lives of Grace Raymond Hebard and her parents, Reverend and Mrs. George D. A. Hebard, when, while looking for a Civil War diary written by a Hebard (Marven) family member, Randee encountered the diary written by George Burmeister. As the saying goes, the rest was history (for the next seven years.)

Randee studied the history of how the confrontation over the St. Louis Arsenal became Civil War in Missouri and how young Iowa soldiers marched through Missouri and fought in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. The Union First: Community and Commitment in the First Iowa Infantry tells the story of the first young men from Iowa to enlist in the Civil War and of their commitments to reunite the Union. The story is based on the diaries of George Burmeister Company K Cedar Rapids, Eugene Ware Company E Burlington, and the newspaper reports of Franc Wilkie, who was assigned to travel with the First Iowa Infantry throughout their ninety days of duty in the summer of 1861.

She and her husband, John, a retired pulmonary physician, live in Iowa City where they are active members of the Congregational church and work to support the Shelter House, the Stanley Museum of Art, conservation efforts, and their garden.