Growing up in Henniker, Marek Bennett was always  aware of the name Freeman Colby, since a road in the town is named after the local farmboy, teacher and Civil War veteran. 

Years later, as a professional cartoonist and author, Bennett became curious about Colby’s story and set out to read the letters Colby had written to his mother back in Henniker detailing his experiences in the Civil War. The result is the award-winning young adult series, “The Civil War Diary of Freeman Colby.”

Bennett spoke to about 30 local writers and artists on the craft of graphic storytelling Saturday at the monthly meeting of the Monadnock Writers’ Group. Bennett’s presentation, “Drawing Community: Creating Comics from Shared Stories,” was sponsored by New Hampshire Humanities and included demonstrating the process of creating a cartoon of the room using feedback from the group. He also explained the difference between formal drawing, more-informal cartoons and comics, which depict an action sequence or series of events. 

Bennett is creating the next volume of the “Diary” series, which follows Colby from his childhood working on his family’s Henniker farm to becoming a schoolteacher, where he was a respected and feared by local students, to enlisting with the 39th Massachusetts Regiment.

“That was a decision he regretted,” Bennett said. 

The “Diary” books have gotten longer as Bennett continues his research, using actual Civil War letters, sketchbooks, diaries and photographs to complete the portrait of a young New Hampshire man fighting in the Civil War. The stories are interspersed with images from the war, including sketches by professional correspondents embedded with  Union and Confederate regiments. The series was a finalist for Best Graphic Novel, Excellence in Graphic Literature, and was named a “Great Graphic Novel for Teens” by YALSA. Bennett was awarded the 2021 Governor’s Award for Art Education.

Bennett’s other works include “The Most Costly Story,” a collaboration with the Vermont Folklife Project, UVM Anthropology and Vermont public health and mental health agencies which provide health care and mental health services to undocumented farm laborers in the Vermont dairy industry. 

“Their lives are very hard. They’re undocumented; they’re basically in hiding,” Bennett said. 

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Bennett worked with the dairy workers to learn their stories, about the homes and family they left behind, the ordeals they survived in order come to the United States to work and the isolation and depression they struggle with living on the margins of society. One page in “The Most Costly Story” depicts a row of huddled figures running along a barbed-wire-topped wall, with the “coyote” guide following the group. Bennett noted that not everyone in the group depicted survived the journey. 

The book is also available in Spanish. 

Bennett said he has always found drawing to be a way to open a gateway to people’s stories, whether he is sitting outside Henniker’s Tucker Free Library or in the wilds of a foreign country. 

“There is something that happens when people see someone sitting and drawing. They open up and talk about their lives and start telling stories, in a way they probably would not if someone just started asking them questions,” Bennett said. 

Bennett also created a Comics Workshop project with Henniker’s sister city of La Reina, Nicaragua, in which he led students in creating  drawings of their lives. 

“With drawing, the  students were able to communicate who they are, where they live what they care about,” Bennett said. “The we brought their pictures back to the kids in Henniker, and they responded with their own pictures of ther own lives. The language barrier didn’t matter.” 

Bennett is available for school visits, comics workshops and classes, including a comics workshop summer camp in 2024. For information, go to his website.