Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War
The following is a guest post by James Marten, professor of history emeritus at Marquette University and author of The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment which is available now wherever books are sold.
George Johnson survived the Civil War—but just barely. Enlisting in the Sixth Wisconsin in the summer of 1861 and rising to the rank of first lieutenant, he served through the end of the war despite being twice wounded. George returned to his hometown of Shawano, perhaps planning to resume his pre-war occupation as a lumberman in central Wisconsin. However, with his health irreparably compromised by wounds, he died in November 1866.
Johnson left neither a family nor a will, and only a meager handful of possessions. Among them were a few household items, clothing, a little cash, and a government bond worth $200 (perhaps bought with the bounty he received when he re-enlisted in 1864). But there were also several objects related to his military service: a suitable-for-framing “memorial” commemorating his service; $27 of Confederate money; a pocket looking glass; two volumes of infantry tactics; one corps badge; and two lieutenant’s epaulets. There were a few other things: perhaps he had carried the satchel and a trunk through the war; perhaps the package of envelopes featured the patriotic slogans and images popular during the war; perhaps the black hat was the one he received with the new uniform in which he—as part of the “black hat” Iron Brigade—had marched in the Grand Review eighteen months earlier.
In any event, his former comrade and executor, Julius Murray, auctioned off Johnson’s belongings. Aside from the government bond, Johnson’s estate brought in a total of $28.86. The epaulets and soldiers’ memorial each earned a nickel, while the corps badge and infantry tactics went for $.25 each. The proceeds didn’t begin to cover the cost of Johnson’s funeral and burial, which cost $47. Murray paid to have a picket fence erected around the grave.
This affecting story plays a small but evocative role in my chapter on the “life cycle of memory” in The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment. And the only reason I was able to include it was that the probate records for Johnson’s estate popped up in a search for the young Wisconsinite on Ancestry.com. I would never have found the story of Johnson’s sad end if I had not checked Ancestry.
Indeed, the lieutenant is just one of nearly 2000 members of the Sixth Wisconsin who appear on a spreadsheet with more than two dozen datapoints that provides one of the book’s vital threads. Although data from a number of primary sources—newspapers, pension files, and so forth—contributed, much of the evidence embedded in the spreadsheet came out of the sometimes tedious but always compelling search results for each of the men who served in the regiment. The sheer volume of available records that would otherwise take years to consult make a patient and shrewd use of Ancestry a powerful complement to other sources more traditionally used by historians of the Civil War.
The most familiar sources available through Ancestry are the manuscript censuses, which have for generations provided important information to historians about dates of birth, occupations, property-owning, ethnic origins, family makeup, educational levels, and other information (the available data varies, of course, by census year).
The sheer volume of available records that would otherwise take years to consult make a patient and shrewd use of Ancestry a powerful complement to other sources more traditionally used by historians of the Civil War.
But more pertinent to historians of Civil War soldiers and units are several sources that will appear when you search by soldier’s name; they are also searchable by themselves, as long as you have a name and regiment (sometimes you can search by regiment alone). They include:
- The Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934. These are simply the half-page cards on which clerks recorded a soldiers’ name, unit (or units), the year he applied for a pension, and his application and pension certificate numbers. It’s actually the website that the National Archives directs you to obtain the necessary information for requesting pension files. Where appropriate, the cards provide the same information for widows’ and dependents’ pensions.
- Records of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. Each resident of a federal soldiers’ home has a page recording demographic data taken when a veteran entered the Home, including age, ethnicity, occupation, and next of kin (which can be heart-breaking—some simply report “none,” while one member of the 6th Wisconsin listed his local GAR post), as well as his various medical conditions, the dates of admission, departures, readmissions, and death, and deceased veterans’ property (usually worth only a few dollars, it was sold off and the proceeds sent to next of kin).
- The 1890 Census of Union Veterans and Widows. A fire destroyed most of the 1890 census records, but the special census of Union veterans survived. The simple schedule records the veterans’ names, residence, units, and years of service. A notes section allowed men to list their physical ailments, note that they had lost their discharge papers, or make other comments; the census taker simply wrote “head affected” in the notes section for one of the veterans of the Sixth.
- Applications for government headstones. Individual family members and friends and organizations like the GAR could obtain free headstones from the federal government for deceased veterans. The cards indicate name and unit, date of death, cemetery, and applicant (by the 1920s and 1930s the American Legion had taken responsibility for maintaining the graves of some Civil War veterans in some towns).
Complementing Ancestry is the “Find a Grave” website. Although it is a stand-alone database, it is included in Ancestry search results. Historians may rightfully hesitate to rely on Find a Grave—the information is a crowd-sourced hodgepodge of facts and family lore, and is accompanied by notes from descendants or others identifying the subject as a distant relative or thanking them for their military service—but it can provide confirmation of birth and death dates, names of family members, residences, and other information that can then be used to fill out more detailed Ancestry searches. And, from time to time, a descendant has posted a picture or, even better, an obituary that, for someone compiling a database of a Civil War regiment, is like striking gold. Ancestry.com can be as crucial a part of a historians’ research of a Civil War regiment as it is for someone researching their family tree.