This book is both a biography of Almont Barnes and a history of First New York Light Artillery, Battery C, in the Civil War. It is also a great STORY because the "world" knows very little about him; even Arlington National Cemetery, where Almont Barnes is buried, is looking for information about him. Almont Barnes was my great grandfather, my mother's mother's father. My mother never told me much about him, probably because she didn't know much. She told me that he had been a newspaper editor in upstate New York and a Captain in the Civil War, and that there was a monument honoring him and his men at Gettysburg. She said that he was a very fine artist, mostly oil paintings -- landscapes. She said that sometime after the Civil War he left his family and ran off with a Spanish dancer End of story. Much of what I have written here I have learned by searching the internet and corresponding with other people who were conducting similar research. As it turns out, he did much more than that After the War, Almont Barnes worked as an Enrolling Clerk in the U. S. House of Representatives, earned a law degree, took part in Wheeler Expeditions out west in territories east of the Rocky Mountains, and worked as Chief of Statistics in the U. S. Department of State, joined the Diplomatic Service and served as U. S. Commercial Agent at La Guyra, Venezuela, South America, and U. S. Consul in Curacao, West Indies, and then spent most of the rest of his long life working in the U. S. Department of Agriculture. He was still working there on his 80th birthday, April 14, 1915. He had divorced his first wife, Frances Ellen Palmer, my great-grandmother in 1878 and married Alice C. Townsend, with whom he had at least one more child -- a daughter, Edith Alice. Unfortunately, I did not find out as much as I wanted about Alice or Edith Alice. Perhaps readers of this book will provide more information. Alice Townsend was living with her husband when he died in Washington in 1918. Their daughter Edith Alice also was living at that time but it appears that she died in 1918 also. Capt. Barnes and his wife Alice are buried at Arlington National Cemetery."