STRATFORD - Housatonic Community College Professor Dave Koch will discuss "Connecticut in the Civil War" as the featured speaker for Sunday Afternoon Talks at 2 p.m. Jan, 17 the Stratford Library, 2203 Main St.

The free program, called a "monthly series of informative and entertaining talks," invites notable locals to speak in an informal atmosphere on a wide range of topics, organizers said.

Connecticut provided a greater percentage of its citizens as Union manpower than any other state. Its soldiers and sailors underwent triumph and tragedy in every theater of operations in the war. In addition, Connecticut was the arsenal of the Union with factories producing uniforms, guns and equipment for the Union armies in unheard of profusion, making Union armies the best-equipped in human history until that time.

Koch, an assistant professor of history at Housatonic, specializes in the Civil War and Native American History. He has worked for national historical and natural sites, promoting the nation’s physical and historical heritage. He has also lectured for organizations across the country and in Europe on such topics as Civil War Battles, Politics in the Civil War, Medicine in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s life and political activities and Slavery and the American Experience, as well as specialized presentations on the Gettysburg National Cemetery and the Battle of Gettysburg, organizers said.

Koch’s presentation will paint "a portrait of Connecticut in the Civil War, a contradictory picture of a state on the cusp of change, though struggling to retain a way of life rapidly fading into a bucolic past," organizers said.

Upcoming series speakers include Stratford Deputy Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour and author Mark Albertson. For more information, call the library’s Public Relations & Programming Office at 203-385-4162 or visit http://www.stratfordlibrary.org/.

Photo: Koch at the site of Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg.