While there are some wonderful free web sites (notably FamilySearch.org) from which you can access many online records, Ancestry.com and Fold3.com offer a wide variety of records that are not available anywhere else. In fact, if you go to the National Archives in Washington D.C. to access the original microfilms for those records, you’ll be directed to […]
Capt. Solomon T. Lyon of the 5th Michigan Infantry has been described as a recipient of the Kearny Medal and there is a photo that seems to prove it. The trouble is that, not only was Capt. Lyon not on the official list of recipients, but he apparently didn’t qualify to receive the medal. So […]
Annie Etheridge is one of at least four women who are known to have received the Kearny Cross. And, although she never actually enlisted in the army (serving as a volunteer field nurse or “vivandiere”), she is frequently described as one of the very few female private citizens who received a pension for her service to the […]
The list of veterans who attended the 1938 reunion at Gettysburg is well-documented … in theory. The official report of the Pennsylvania Commission1 includes a list of those veterans who attended but there are several problems with that list. First, the book is hard to find and therefore not readily accessible to most researchers. Second, […]
For those who may be interested, these are the attendance figures for the 1913 (50th) and 1938 (75th) veterans reunions at Gettysburg as published in the official reports of the Pennsylvania Commission: Attendance at Gettysburg Reunions 1913 1938 (50th Anniversary) (75th Anniversary) Residence # Union+Conf. # Union+Conf. Alabama 200 (0+200) 26 (6+20) Arizona 10 (7+3) […]
The 1913 Gettysburg reunion was the largest meeting of Civil War veterans after the war. Yet genealogists and other researchers have never had access to a list of those who attended. I am very pleased to report that I have discovered what I believe are the original, unpublished registers that were signed by the veterans […]
I’ve been researching the surgeons at Gettysburg field hospitals for inclusion in Pocket Gettysburg. One of the best sources is “A Vast Sea of Misery” by Gregory A. Coco (Gettsyburg: Thomas Publications, 1988). As always when I add a new source to Pocket Gettysburg, I try to reconcile that new data with the my previous sources, […]
I’ve transcribed the entire 1860 Federal Census of Gettysburg in the ongoing effort to learn more about the residents of the Borough at the time of the battle. (I might even add all of the residents in a future version of our smartphone app, Pocket Gettysburg.) The transcription process was time-consuming because I frequently found myself […]