Civil War Saturday - the war brought home

With the 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter only days away, I've decided (with prompting from Bill West's Civil War Genealogy Challenge) to add to my genealogy goals and examine the Civil War's impact on the families I research.  Occasionally on Saturdays over the next four years I will write about my findings.

Matthew Brady Civil War camp scene from the National Archives via Flickr's The Commons

My children have four direct ancestors who fought in the Civil War - three for the Union and one for the Confederacy.

Caulk, Allen Monroe	Union	Company D, Illinois 7th Infantry
Conway, Charles Turner Porter	Confederate	Company I, 61st Infantry Regiment Tennessee
Jones, Joseph	Union	Company B, Illinois 117th Infantry and Company H, Illinois 33rd Infantry
McAdams, Samuel B	Union	Company D, 8th Regiment, Tennessee Cavalry

At least eleven uncles of various degrees also fought - most for the Union - and uncounted cousins, in-laws and shirttail relatives. Of the uncles only Matthew McAdams died during the War. Like many, he died of disease in Nashville. I shall write about Matthew next week.

Clark, Elon D	Union
Conway, Joseph	Union
McAdams, David Brainard	Union
McAdams, John Cloyd	Union
McAdams, Matthew Judson	Union
Mulkey, Isaac	Union
Mulkey, James D.	Union
Palmer, James Armistead	Confederate
Whitaker, B F	Union
Whitaker, Frederick L	Union
Williams, John F	Confederate

Some of our families lived in the midst of some of the fiercest fighting - western Maryland - and some in areas of brutal local conflicts - East Tennessee and Missouri. The Civil War looms large in their stories and traditions. My husband's Tidewater family, proud but distant cousins of Robert E. Lee, were staunch Confederates and he grew up hearing the war referred to as the War of Northern Agression. My grandmother, whose grandfather and five great-uncles all fought for the Union, was equally proud of her heritage. She was however, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the full scope of her family's involvement in the War. I wrote about this last summer in Story time, or Lies, Lies and more damned Lies.

During these Sesquicentennial years, a century and a half after the Civil War raged across our country and our families, I plan to research and write about the its impact on both the men who fought and the women and families swept up in the conflict. The costs and effects were far reaching, profound and continued late into the 20th century.