Wonderful materiel indeed, PD!
I've somehow been nominated my family's genealogist -- basically, everybody wanted someone to do it, as long as they didn't have to be the one. It turns out to be a time sink, yes, but oh my gosh, what a wonderful connection it has given me to American history -- to the "recent unpleasantness" between the states and, especially, to people who had just been names and fading photographs, like my great-great-grandfather.
Attachment:
whsult.jpg
My grandfather had this picture of
his grandfather over his mantle. My grandfather grew up in his grandfather's home, and heard the veterans' stories of their adventures thirty years before. The parts that he listened to were the "we whupped them Yankees that day," that resulted in his being shocked when he entered school and found out that the South lost. I never heard those stories myself, but it sounded glorious to my grandfather as a boy, so much so that when he was pronounced unfit by Army doctors in 1917 because of a perforated eardrum, he found a private doctor who would give him a passing certificate so he could get in. (He fought in France as a Sgt in the artillery, received a battlefield commission, and never wanted to talk at all about any battles after that. I didn't even know about his battlefield commission until I found his lieutenant's pips after he died.)
But back to what I have discovered about this young man in the picture: he was recruited into the 37th Virginia Infantry Regiment in 1861, when he was about 21 years old and apprenticing to a blacksmith. This picture is probably from about 2 years later, after he had become the First Sergeant for Company B. He's wearing sergeant's stripes and his pants have a uniform stripe down the side, but otherwise this looks like a civilian suit -- I wonder if this is a home-tailored "dress" uniform for the photo.
From the archives at the University of Virginia:
Quote:
The 37th Virginia Infantry was organized primarily in Lee, Russell, Scott and Washington counties in the spring and summer of 1861. The regiment trained in Richmond, then spent the autumn of 1861 in the Shenandoah Valley area. The regiment's major battles included Kernstown I, Battle of McDowell, Jackson's Valley Campaign, Seven Days' Battles, Second Bull Run, Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Siege of Petersburg, Battle of Sayler's Creek, Appomattox Campaign. At the time of surrender in April 1865, only 39 members of the original regiment remained with the regiment.
He was one of those 39 and, to the best of my knowledge, came through without injury. He died in 1921 of "paralysis and old age," according to his widow's application for a Confederate pension in 1926, which is where I also found more details of his service. And I've found more -- one branch of the family, descended from his youngest son who became a doctor and moved to Arizona -- has the given name Preston that has repeated now through three generations. From the pension record, I found where it came from: it was his Colonel's last name.
Through this research, this young man who looks down from my sister's mantle now (in UK, where it proves that we, too, have ancestors) has become more and more alive to me. He survived the war, of course, but he went through horrific battles, and it seems that most of his friends did not. I can't look at a Civil War photograph now, especially of troops in their daily life, and not feel that I know those people.
Thew other day, I posted something about
human wormholes that reach back into history. On this Memorial Day, especially, I think about all the Americans who fought with and against the grandfather who was adored by that the kid who grew up to become my grandfather. I think that is a wormhole, too.
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