Saturday 28 April 2018

A Piece of Civil War History in the Family Tree

I have been working on my family's history for the past 30 years or so. And there have been times when it has been more exciting than others.

The time when I discovered my great-grandfather on a passenger list from the Danish West Indies to the U.S. was particularly exciting, because of the stories I had always heard that he had arrived on a ship. But no one knew exactly where in the Caribbean he came from. I had been looking for him in The Ellis Island Database and eventually discovered that he had come in through another port, Castle Gardens, in New York City.

Honestly, after moving to Central America, I had been primarily focused on adapting to my new home and I had not been doing much research. But things have settled down, and in the last year or so I have gotten back into it.

Since Christmas, I've been having a lot of fun. My brother got both of my parents to do DNA testing through Ancestry. They both got their results back. My mother was really excited about seeing all of the people on Ancestry that were identified as "cousins." That didn't interest me quite as much. As far I was concerned they were still strangers.What got my interest was that now Mom had an ancestry account, which meant we could possibly make more headway with the research.

So, while Mom was visiting over the Easter vacation, we spent hours on Ancestry. And we found the draft registration for one relative and actual enlistment and service documentation of an ancestor who had served as a sailor in the Union Navy during the Civil War.

I was so excited that I called the African American Civil War museum
in Washington D.C. to see if my 2nd great-grandfather's name was listed there. Unfortunately, he is not listed because he was a sailor and not a soldier. That was somewhat disappointing, but one day I will get his name on a brick or something there so that his service and sacrifice will be recognized and remembered.

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