Private Gustavus Pratt died of typhoid fever on June 25, 1862. He was 32 years old. His death did not end with him.

It tore a hole through his family, through the mind of his wife, the faith of his father, and the life of his brother. “The Awful Hole Left by Gustavus Pratt” is the story of how the loss of one ordinary soldier during the American Civil War set off a chain reaction of grief, madness, and ruin within a single family. The full episode drops January 14, 2026.

They were teenagers when they enlisted, young soldiers whose ambition and courage propelled them into the leadership ranks of Company D as the American Civil War consumed older men around them. Jeremiah Wakefield and David Ring rose together, shared similar family histories, and committed to three more years of service. But in May 1864, during the savage fighting at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, their paths diverged: one was badly wounded, and the other was killed in battle.

More than one in five Civil War soldiers were teenagers. In Company D, two of them, 18-year-old David Ring and 19-year-old Jeremiah Wakefield, rose quickly through the ranks on ambition and grit. But the war would claim one before he ever saw twenty-one. The full episode premieres on December 17.

On July 4, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee vanished from the U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland. No discharge. No death record. No trace. His disappearance shattered his family: his wife, Cornelia, and their infant daughter slid into poverty, denied a widow’s pension because no one could prove Leonard was gone. More than 163 years later, this episode of Company D follows the trail he left behind and uncovers the mystery of what became of Leonard Peaslee.

On May 5, 1862, Private Leonard Peaslee checked into U.S. General Hospital in Annapolis, sick but expected to recover. Two months later, after writing his wife on July 4, he vanished. No death record. No discharge. No trace. Ep06 — “Leonard Peaslee Is Gone” follows the 163-year mystery of a Union private who simply disappeared. And maybe, just maybe, we find him. The full episode premieres on December 3.

Shot four times in battle, Henry H. Shaw of Maine refused to quit. A decorated hero of the Third Maine Infantry, he marched not home but South—into the heart of Reconstruction. In Tarboro, North Carolina, he became a postmaster, a reformer, and the unlikely founder of Princeville—the first incorporated Black town in America. Discover forgotten history on Company D.

Henry Harrison Shaw survived four Confederate bullets during the war. But when the guns fell silent, the Union veteran did something few could fathom—he went South. To Tarboro, North Carolina.
Once branded a Yankee invader, Shaw reinvented himself as a Southern gentleman. Yet his greatest legacy came not from battle, but from what he built in peace: selling his riverside land to former slaves who would found Princeville, the first incorporated Black town in the United States. The full episode drops on November 12.

William Hogan Higgins had an oversized ego and an outsized personality. Traits that won him loyal followers but also many enemies, including the Governor of Maine. His rocky tenure with Company D of the Third Maine ended with a bullet wound to the leg, followed by a special assignment: adjutant at one of the most notorious Union prisons in the Civil War. A bombastic bully has his day on Company D.