I am rapidly losing count of the interesting genealogical data sources you can find doing field research vs reading the internet. Today, as part of the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War (DUVCW) annual convention we toured Andersonville National Historic Site, commonly referred to as just "Andersonville," the most notorious of the Civil War POW camps. Nowadays it is also the National POW Museum and a national cemetery where burials still take place. It is run by the National Park Service, which separately has a searchable Soldiers and Sailors Database of both Union and Confederate combatants. We learned the amazing story of CT POW Dorence Atwater, a 20-year-old private assigned to the "Dead House," where bodies of soldiers were stacked until there were enough to fill a trench, shoulder to shoulder. His job was to record the name & basic data of each Union soldier who died. Fearing the list would disappear in the event of Confederate defeat, which seemed likely in 1864, he made a duplicate record of the more than 12,000 corpses he processed (in just 9 months.) He smuggled it out so families could learn the fate of soldiers Missing In Action. Atwater's list, published in 1866 thanks to the intervention of Clara Barton, can be downloaded from Internet Archive. It has been my experience that the deaths of Civil War soldiers known at the time to have died were usually reported in MA town records. In spot checking a few of the MA POW graves I saw, though, none were so recorded, probably because there was no such "vital record" category. And if he left no dependents, there might be no pension to claim, plus it's not clear that POWs were necessarily eligible for pensions. Near state borders, a man might enlist in another state, too. Various factors like this can combine to leave you with a hole in your family tree you don't even know you had. For example, gravestone #939, H.B. Freelove of RI, when compared to Atwater's list, is revealed to have served in Co. H, 1st RI Cavalry, deceased 7 May 1864 of diarrhea, no occupation given. Being there in person gives you his full name (see the photo below of the RI state marker.) Judicious guesswork, the NEHGS (americanancestors.org) databases, your favorite state & federal census sources, and fold3.com for military records reveal Pvt. Freelove's parents, siblings, occupation, probable economic status, and more. Give it a try, and post your best guess in the comments section and I'll share my conclusions.
All photos © Maura Mackowski 2019.
All photos © Maura Mackowski 2019.
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