The year was 1864. The American Civil War was in its third year, and the fighting was intense. As the newly appointed General Grant advanced on Richmond, Virginia, some of the bloodiest battles of the war were fought at: The Wilderness (17,666 dead), Spotsylvania (10,920 dead), Drewry’s Bluff (4,160 dead), Cold Harbor (12,000 dead), and Petersburg (16,569 dead). These five battles alone cost 61,315 lives.

In the South, General William Tecumseh Sherman led a force of 110,000 from Chattanooga, Tennessee, into Georgia to begin the Atlanta Campaign, which would last until the city was surrendered on 2 September 1864.

After ordering the evacuation of Atlanta, he burned most of the city and from there Sherman began his infamous “March to the Sea” as he set his sites on Savannah. Cutting a wide path through Georgia, his troops took food and other supplies, and left a devastating trail of burned plantations and crops. On 22 December 1864, he reached Savannah, where he would remain until January 1865 when he continued his “scorched earth” campaign north into the Carolinas.

In the Midwest the year opened with severe cold and snow. The high temperature for January 1st in Chicago, Illinois, was sixteen degrees below zero and Minneapolis, Minnesota, was even colder with a high of twenty-five below. 

In England, the Dale Dyke Dam burst, causing the Great Sheffield Flood (or the “Great Inundation” as it is also known). The failure of the dam sent tons of water through central Sheffield washing away bridges, destroying 800 houses, and killing 270 people.

The American Civil War was having a devastating impact on the textile mills of Lancashire, England. Union blockades of Confederate ports halted the exportation of cotton that was needed in the Lancashire mills, resulting in a “cotton famine.”

Prussia and Denmark were involved in the Second Schleswig War, fighting for control of the duchy of Schleswig. This matter wouldn’t be entirely settled until after World War I.

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Contributed by Raydonna “Donna” Adams
This is my cousin twice-removed, Vivion Davis in his bomber jacket. He served in World War II.

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Contributed by Carol Benson, Minneapolis, Minnesota
This is a picture of my father Elmer N. Magnuson serving in the army in WWI about 1917. He was born in 1894 and died in 1975.

Ancestry released a formal press release today regarding the partnership with NARA, which we reported last week here on the blog. (The photograph is from the signing of that agreement. Pictured are Jim Hastings of NARA, Ancestry CEO, Tim Sullivan, and Dr. Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States.)

The press release also says that,

To commemorate the NARA-Ancestry.com agreement on the eve of Memorial Day, Ancestry.com is making its entire U.S. Military Collection — the largest online collection of American military records — available for free to the public. From May 20 through May 31, people can log on to www.ancestry.com/military to view more than 100 million names and 700 titles and databases of military records, the majority of which come from NARA, from all 50 U.S. states.

Click through to read the entire press release. Continue reading →

 

Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.
~ Arnold Edinborough

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Check out the websites of genealogical and historical societies for the areas in which your ancestors lived. You may find online exhibits or guides that are relevant to your research. And while you’re there, consider joining. You never know what goodies you’ll find in their periodicals and what benefits that may come with membership.

Every so often I read a book that changes the way I think about something. Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War is one of those books.

Two of my great-great grandfathers fought in the Civil War. One served for a brief six months, returning home ill with dysentery while the other enlisted in several regiments until a ball went through his right hand causing a permanent disability. My family was one of the lucky ones. On the first page of the preface, Gilpin tallies up the numbers for us. Two percent of the population died between 1861 and 1865; in today’s terms that would amount to 6 million dead. Confederate soldiers were three times as likely to die as those in the Union forces. Soldiers and civilians died in conflicts that raged across farm lands and in our urban areas; the line between battlefield and home blurring. If a soldier was lucky enough to survive a battle, it didn’t mean disease or infection wouldn’t kill him later.

Death and dying weren’t simple matters in mid-nineteenth-century America. In pre-Civil War America when a person died they were usually surrounded by loved ones who cared for them in their last moments. During the War soldiers wrote home on the eve of battle not knowing if they’d be killed far from their family. It was important for grieving relatives to know the details of the soldier’s death and hear his last words so comrades stepped in and reported the details. Continue reading →