How did the Civil War affect your family?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The horror of the Civil War really hit home when I started researching my genealogy.

My great-great-grandfather volunteered to join the Union Army, leaving his pregnant wife and seven children behind. He mustered in September 1862 and died from rubella in a military hospital in February 1863.

His family was left in poverty, not helped by the government’s refusal to assign survivor’s benefits directly to wives and children. Management of the meager pension was given to a loathsome male neighbor, who embezzled money and property.

GGGrandpa’s eldest son (George) also joined the Union Army, despite his father’s pleas not to. George survived, but was seriously and permanently wounded. His post-war life was a mess (today he’d probably be diagnosed with PTSD). He was married six times and did nothing to provide for the children he sired. Some of the girls were shipped off to be indentured servants early in life.

2

I don’t think anyone was here yet. That’s not to say it couldn’t have affected them in some way, but I’ve not heard anyone mention it ever.

3

Three of my four maternal great-grear-grandfathers and an uncle served. Everyone in my direct paternal line was too old or young.

A great-great uncle died in the first Battle of Fair Oaks, buried on the battlefield. He was the eldest son who supported his six siblings. The five youngest kids were fostered out. His father lied about his age and enlisted but was mustered out for fraud.

A great-great-grandfather was drafted and died of disease. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Arlington. He left a widow and three daughters.

A third great-great-grandfather was drafted and survived the war.

4

Overwhelmingly, it didn’t. That was an issue for people living in America not my ancestors. Mostly my family migration was 20th century including both of my grandmothers being immigrants. My paternal grandfather, and his family aren’t really talked about or researched…for reasons. That opens up a window for Potato Famine forced migration in time to be here for the Civil War.

As far as I know, I have zero direct link to the US Civil War. More likely is extended family that participated in the Irish revolutionary period or later in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. There have been some relatively prominent members in the various IRA factions to bear the same anglicization of the clan name.

5

I’ve 5 ancestors who were Civil Warriors, a story a 6th was (but no evidence), as well as several uncles and a coupla cousins. The saying is that the war was ‘brother against brother’, and while that happened, it was mostly ‘brother with brother, as well as with uncle, some cousins, several school chums, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker’.

2 of the ancestors were killed, one at Shilo, one at The Wilderness. No stories about PTSD, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 90% of those who saw combat were afflicted.

6

On both sides, my family didn’t immigrate to the US until the 1900s and then they married other new immigrants. So aside from structural/social changes to the nation itself that have lasted since, it had no personal effect on my family.

7

AFAICT My people were farming potatoes on the emerald isle during that conflict.:smiley:

8

Well, it’s a little hard to be sure, given the absence of decent records, but as the most prominent branch of the family wound up closely allied to Cromwell and at least one wound up in a major role in the army, to the point of signing Charles I’s death warrant, it’s fair to say it had a pretty big effect. Certainly the family wealth afterwards seems to have taken a hit.

You didn’t specify which Civil War…

9

So far, I’ve found one widow’s pension applied for ca1900, and collected on it for only a couple of years before she died.

10

One ancestor died, one was permanently crippled, and one made it through fine.

My great-great grandfather Patrick Coleman saw about the worst the war had to offer: friendly fire incidents, pell-mell retreats, suicide assaults on entrenched positions, and finally capture and death in a prison camp.

He was a famine immigrant from Ireland. He enlisted at the very beginning of the war despite having a wife and two small children. He joined the 2nd New York Heavy Artillery, which was assigned to the forts around Washington.

Just before the Second Battle of Bull Run, he was in a small unit advancing in front of the main army when they ran into almost the entire Confederate Cavalry. They had to run most of the way back to Washington, losing several men, but he managed to get back.

Serving in the forts was actually a pretty cushy posting, since the Confederates only rarely threatened Washington. But in May 1864, during the Overland Campaign, Grant called up the Heavy Artillery units to serve as infantry to replace his massive losses at the Battle of the Wilderness. Coleman’s unit joined the campaign at the tail end of the Battle of Spotsylvania, where in the confusion they ended up exchanging fire with another Union regiment.

The worst battle he was in was Cold Harbor. Grant ordered repeated frontal assaults on entrenched Confederate lines, and the Union troops were just mowed down. According to some accounts, 6,000 Union troops fell in just the first 30 minutes. His division was in the middle of that carnage.

But they continued south. Coleman was captured while Grant was trying to encircle Petersburg, when his division was flanked by a surprise attack by the Confederates and 1,700 Union prisoners were taken, including him. A Confederate soldier wrote: “With a wild yell which rang out shrill and fierce through the gloomy pines, Mahone’s men burst upon the flank - a pealing volley, which roared along the whole front - a stream of wasting fire, under which the adverse left fell as one man - and the bronzed veterans swept forward, shriveling up Barlow’s division as lightning shrivels the dead leaves of autumn.”

He was sent to Andersonville Prison Camp, where the conditions were horrendous. After just two months he died of scurvy, and is buried in Georgia. Ironic for a Irish Famine refugee to basically die of starvation in his adopted country.

My German great-great-great-grandfather’s career was much shorter and might have been comical if he hadn’t ended up a cripple. He was a 40-year-old tailor who enlisted in the “5th German Rifles”, the 45th New York Infantry. He was posted to Annandale just south of Washington DC, and was captured in his unit’s very first skirmish with the enemy, when Confederate Cavalry dashed through the lines and scooped up a bunch of prisoners. Official reports remarked that the German troops didn’t fire a shot, and that there had been “free use of spirits” among them. So he was probably captured because he was too drunk to run. :smiley: He was also sent to a prison camp, but was released in an exchange six months later. But he contracted tuberculosis in the camp, and wasn’t able to do heavy work the rest of his life.

My Swiss great-great-grandfather served in the Union Cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley for about six months near the end of the war, but wasn’t involved in more than a few skirmishes since the major campaigns in the area were over by then.

11

My family was still in Poland until the early 1900s. No idea about my husband’s family - they’re amazingly indifferent about their genealogy.

12

^^^ this. No ancestors arrived in the US AFAIK before the 1870’s

13

My great-grandfather arrived from Germany in 1859 at the age of around 15. In 1864 he volunteered (or possibly was drafted) for a Union army unit from New England, and served about one year. I couldn’t find that he was in any major battles, and he got out without any injuries.

Based on that service, he received a small pension for the rest of his life. Around 1920, when he was around 76, this was his only income, and he petitioned the government for an increase in his pension because he couldn’t survive on it. The petition was denied.

He lived another 9 years, probably helped a little by his eldest daughter, but he had alienated his entire family so if that happened it was probably somewhat grudging.

Among my other great-grandfathers, one was born in 1861 in Quebec, so his father was probably not affected; another was born in 1874 in Illinois, and his father was only 18 in 1865, so probably didn’t serve; the last one was born in 1867 in Nebraska, and his father was much older, he was 45 in 1861 so he was probably not called up. Two other great-great-grandfathers were the right age to serve but I have no knowledge if they actually did serve or if they were injured.

So my family was almost unaffected by the Civil War, as far as I can tell.

14

No one in my mother’s family, nor my paternal grandfather’s family was here. My paternal grandmother’s family, however, has been here forever, and believe it or not, was even involved in the Revolutionary War. I had ancestors who were members of the first synagogue in N. America (or any of the Americas, I think). George Washington wrote a letter to its members, promising them a land of true religious freedom.

Considering how well-documented our participation in revolutionary events is, and how not well-documented out participation in the Civil War is, I have a sinking feeling that I had some family members on the wrong side. I know that I had direct ancestors who were in the south just prior to the Civil War, but left. They were in a mixed marriage, and she had been disowned by her family for marrying not just a gentile, but a poor Irish Catholic immigrant. He, meanwhile, got himself excommunicated for nun-napping (it was actually quite kosher-- his friend’s teenage daughter joined a convent, and then wanted to leave, but wasn’t being allowed to leave. She got someone to smuggle a letter to her family, and her father broke her out.) Anyway, as an eff-you to the church, he began practicing Judaism, and I think actually converted, although I don’t know if he went through a full conversion or not (ie, I don’t know if he was snipped as an adult).

Anyway, the two of them started a new life in New York, and I think he was too old for conscription into the Northern Army, but I doubt they had children who were old enough. I think they were lazy abolitionists, which is to say, they would have posted “END SLAVERY” on their Facebook page, but they would not have marched with John Brown. I vaguely recall that they participated in activities to benefit the Union Army, but a lot of people spent a couple of hours a week rolling bandages. They didn’t do things like spend time nursing people in hospitals.

I’m not sure what my great-great-great-grandfather’s (I might have missed a great) status was vis-a-vis voting rights, but I’m sure they were both Lincoln supporters. In other words, they were pretty typical Americans in their political involvement, and they mourned a great president.

I know absolutely nothing about the peripheral relatives who remained in the south. All I know is that I am definitely NOT related to Judah Benjamin.

Bruch Ha-Shem

15

Now that I think about it, I should get the raw research my grandmother has on their lives. I’ll bet there a great book in there. Their grand-daughter, my grandmother, had a serious meet-cute with my grandfather, and that would make a great ending.

16

As far as I know only one small twig of the family tree was in the country before the Civil War. The father of my paternal grandmother came from a family that had been in the country for a long while. Long before the internet a relative did research and said we are related in some way to Abraham Lincoln through that part of the family. There is a common last name linking us to his grandmother but my quick looks failed to locate the connection. Someday I’ll go back on anscestry and look again.

17

It didn’t. My grandparents immigrated from Sweden around 1900.

18

My family was in Russia, avoiding Cossacks. My wife’s family, on the other hand, was in a town in Pennsylvania that was the location of the farthest north Confederate advance. They burned the sidewalks. There was a book on two counties, one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia which quotes the diary of her great great … great aunt.
I think one of her ancestors went to war in place of someone drafted, which you could do then for pay.

19

My great-great-great grandfather fought for the North, leaving his family behind, eldest kids and wife managing the farm. They lived in relative poverty like most of their neighbors before he left, continued in that vein during his absence, and also after his return.

On another family line, my great-great grandmother’s brother also fought for the north, and died in the war. But he’d been unmarried, left no kids.

These facts were pretty much completely forgotten by their descendants and collaterals until I unearthed them during my “discover my Roots phase” (inspired by Roots, of course).

20

My maternal grandmothers grandfather was a drummer boy for the North, his brother fought for the south. They lived in Maryland. The drummer boy survived and became a barber.