The Getting Started with Genealogy Book at Genealogy How To .com

When one performs research for ancestors and the lives they lived in the past, it is worth consideration to include historical events and matters as they stood at a particular point in time. I will offer a few examples from my own efforts only to suggest a train of thought.

My father joined the Army in 1915 in anticipation of the first World War. In 1916 Poncho Villa attacked the New Mexico town of Columbus where at least 15 American soldiers were killed by some 500 Mexican troops. President Woodrow Wilson ordered General Pershing to take 14,000 Army troops and an additional 140,000 National Guard to guard that border, and at the same time gain experience under wartime conditions for the battle to come in France and Germany. The troops had to be on constant alert as border raids were still an occasional nuisance. This action was called The Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916-1917. Continue Reading »

Tags: Family History, Genealogy, Genealogy Books, Genealogy Data

If you have any connection with your ancestors to New England, I highly recommend you join the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). The value of this organization can not be overstated. They are a gold mine to researchers!

Now, the NEHGS has created an alliance with Footnote.com. Footnote has a free search capability, but requires one to join in order to see and copy a document. I just spent some time at NEHGS, Footnote and then Google. Here is what I have gathered.                                                                               _________________________________________________

Harvey Rice Bourland, after whom I was named, has been clearly one of my major  research efforts. But in 15 years of work I never determined he fought in the Civil War.

Today by going into my membership at NEHGS and clicking through to Footnote, I learned the following in the several documents I found there. Harvey had enlisted on August 23, 186? in Madisonville, KY as a Private in Company K, 9^th Regiment, Kentucky Infantry (Mounted) for 3 years of service under Captain Fowler.

On May 27, 1863 he was ordered detached from the 9^th and directed to General Preston who assigned him to the 5^th Regiment Kentucky Infantry (Mounted) and became the 3^rd Company K of that regiment.

He was captured on July 20, 1863 at Cheshire, Ohio and sent to Camp Chase, Ohio and whence to Cincinnati by the orders of Brigadier General Cor. On August 20, 1863 he was transferred to Camp Douglas.

He was then transferred on February 24, 1865 to Point Lookout, MD for exchange.

Now, jumping to Google:

Camp Chase was a Civil War camp established in May 1861, on land leased by the U.S. Government. It served as a replacement for the much smaller Camp Jackson. Four miles west of Columbus, the main entrance was on the National Road. Boundaries of the camp were present-day Broad Street (north), Hague Avenue (east), Sullivant Avenue (south), and near Westgate Avenue (west). Named for former Ohio Governor and Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, it was a training camp for Ohio volunteer army soldiers, a parole camp, a muster-out post, and a prisoner-of-war camp. The nearby Camp Thomas served as a similar base for the Regular Army.

A prison camp for Confederate prisoners of war was built at Point Lookout, Md., on the tip of the peninsula where the Potomac River joins Chesapeake Bay. In the two years during which the camp was in operation, August, 1863, to June, 1865, Point Lookout overflowed with inmates, surpassing its intended capacity of 10,000 to a population numbering between 12,500 and 20,000. In all, over 50,000 men, both military and civilian, were held prisoner there.

G.W. Jones, a private of Co. H, 24th Virginia Cavalry, described his ominous entrance into the prison amidst “a pile of coffins for dead rebels,” hearing the lid close shut on his own soon thereafter when he learned that the system of prisoner exchanges had been suspended for the duration of the war. Jones described the camp as laid out into a series of streets and trenches, intended to aid in drainage, and surrounded by a fourteen foot parapet wall. Prisoners, who lived sixteen or more to a tent, were subjected to habitually short rations and limited fire wood in winter, and when the coffee ration was suspended for federal prisoners at Andersonville, the Point Lookout prisoner lost theirs as well.

The worst the prisoners suffered, however, may have been inflicted by the physical conditions. The flat topography, sandy soil, and an elevation barely above high tide led to poor drainage, and the area was subjected to every imaginable extreme of weather, from blazing heat to bone-chilling cold. Polluted water exacerbated the problems of inadequate food, clothing, fuel, housing, and medical care, and as a result, approximately 4,000 prisoners died there over 22 months.

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Now, my first job was in Cincinnati; my brother lives there today; my son went to school near Columbus, Ohio.

Like all such research, one can but say,  ”If only I had known this then”.

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Tags: Family History, Genealogy, Genealogy Books, Genealogy Data