Halloween, Civil War Style

It's getting close to Halloween and I thought I would share an image from the 26 October 1861 Harper's Weekly entitled "Jeff Davis Reaping the Harvest."

Note the skulls, the vulture, the noose, the snake, and the rib cage.

Politics today are so tame compared to 150 years ago!

And what does this have to do with family history and genealogy? Directly - nothing. But indirectly, it tells us a lot about how the Northern newspapers viewed Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. It shows who they blamed for the war, which was really just getting started. And it seems to foretell the slaughter we would experience over the next nearly four years. This is the sort of thing your northern family members read and likely agreed with, This is the sort of editorial comment which made your southern family members crazy over the unfair association between Jefferson Davis and the Grim Reaper.

Right Name, Wrong Man

As a family historian, one of my jobs is to determine if the documents in front of me actually refer to the family I am researching. The failure to properly analyze historical records is at least partially responsible for folks deciding that they are related to this person whose history is interesting, exciting, or matches what they wish their family story to be.

Recently I was contacted by a lady who wanted to determine the Confederate unit in which her great-grandfather fought during the Civil War. All she knew was his name (John Stanford Luna), the name of his wife (Katie Little), a pension number (7193), and that John lived in Bedford County, Tennessee. Tennessee residents were predominantly Confederate supporters, but there was a strong pro-Union faction in East Tennessee. Bedford County is in central Tennessee, suggesting that it was likely that John did, in fact serve with the Confederate Army. If that was true, then his pension would have been a Tennessee pension since Confederate soldiers did not receive federal pensions. (the reasons for that are a different story)

I began my search with the National Park Service Soldiers and Sailors Database. The search revealed that John S. Luna served in Co. B of the 53rd Tennessee Infantry. It also noted that his records were filed under "J.S. Luna" and "John S. Lunah."

Fortunately, the Tennessee service records are included in the subscription-based Fold3.com database and I was able to locate the 19 pages of John Luna's military service. They detailed John's service which included John's capture on two separate occasions as well as a flesh wound he suffered from a gunshot to his left arm. One of the documents included a physical description of John Luna, which is a nice bonus since so often we do not know what our ancestors looked like.

Another page noted that John enlisted in Nashville, Tennessee which is about 50 miles north of Bedford County. This fact sounded a little warning bell in my head. There were units raised in Bedford County during the Civil War so it made little sense for John to travel such a great distance (two or three days on foot) simply to enlist in Nashville. A quick search of the Wiki related to the 53rd Tennessee Infantry on FamilySearch.org told me that the men of Company B came predominantly from Marshall County, Tennessee As a student of the Civil War I also know that most men served in units raised in their hometowns, serving under men they knew and respected, and serving with their cousins, friends, and neighbors. I began to wonder if this man was really the John Luna I sought.

The State of Tennessee has an online database "Tennessee Confederate Pension Applications: Soldiers & Widows." A search of the alphabetic list of applicants offered no John or J.S. Luna, but there was a "John S. Luria" from Marshall County who served in the 53rd Tennessee Infantry with pension #7193. The spelling of the surname could simply be an example of the indexer mis-reading difficult handwriting. There was no record of a Bedford County pensioner named John Luna.

FamilySearch.org, a free database, includes over 375,000 records in the category of "Tennessee, Confederate Pension Applications, Soldiers and Widows, 1891-1965." Here I was able to find the pension file for John S. Luna, Pension #7193. The file included John's pension application in which he stated that he was born in October of 1843 in Marshall County, not Bedford County, Tennessee.

John also reported that he was married, but did not include the name of his wife. However, in 1950 Miss June Luna of Huntsville, Alabama requested pension information for John Solomon Luna and the widow's pension, if applicable, for his wife, Margaret Ann Cheek. According to the information provided by my client, John's middle name was Stanford, not Solomon, and his wife was Katie, not Margaret. The possibility that the John Luna who served in the 53rd Tennessee Infantry was not the ancestor of my client was growing stronger.

Genealogy sometimes means returning to the drawing board, so to speak, and starting over. That is what I advised for this particular client. The important questions to be answered are:

How does she know that John Stanford Luna is her ancestor? Are the names of John and Katie in a family Bible? On a document? Or are they simply names discovered by another relative and assigned to the family tree?

What is the name of John's child who would be her grandfather or grandmother? It is possible to determine the names of that person's parents via a death certificate, possibly a birth or baptismal record, or by tracing wills and probates or land transactions.

It would be so easy to simply go along with what the client wishes and believes. I could have presented the Civil War service record and pension application as bona fide records pertaining to John Stanford Luna since the names appear to match the name of the ancestor; however, the differing locations and names of the wives are sufficient evidence to raise doubts.

Family history is not always easy to pursue. There are false leads, red herrings, and wrong turns. Clients provide incorrect information and can try to steer the research along preferred lines. But good historical research and honest genealogy means that an absence of contradictory evidence is not the same as positive proof of a relationship.

The Mystery of a 19th Century Death

This isn't a traditional who-dunnit mystery. The question is not who killed Nathan Eakman or why. But there are a lot of questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and burial.

Nathan Eakman, my husband's great (x2) grandfather, died in 1863. We don't know much about Nathan's death and even less about his life. Most of the information I have been able to uncover is related to the settlement of his estate.

His widow, Hannah, was left with three small children ranging from newborn to four years old. The estate she inherited was valued at $292.60, or about $64,000. Not a lot of money for a young widow to raise three small children. There was no land to inherit, and most of the value of the estate was in crops: hay, oats, corn, and wheat. The most valuable items Nathan owned prior to his death were a $50 mare and a second mare and her colt, worth $80. Nearly half of Hannah's inheritance, $28,500, was tied up in three horses.

Those three horses made me think that perhaps Nathan was the sort of man who was always going to get rich. He owned no cows or hogs no oxen or mules or even chickens, but he had three expensive horses. And a lot of crops to feed them (and his family). I felt a bit sorry for Hannah reading the inventory of Nathan's estate. Seemed like she has married a man who was a bit of a rascal.

Then I read the accounts charged to Nathan's estate related to his burial.

In the mid-19th century burial customs required that Nathan's body be washed and dressed in his best clothes. An open casket funeral was held within a day or two of the death and then the body was buried.

It appears that either Nathan had no clothes fit to be buried in, or else Hannah was determined to give her husband a proper send-off. Among the bills for funeral expenses were $7.80 for a pair of pants, a neck tie, socks, and shoes, $2 for a shirt, and another $4.50 for a coat. The total of $14.30, or $3135, seems like an excessive amount to be spent for a burial. And what in the world was Nathan doing prior to his death that left him with no socks or shoes in which to be buried?

Since the United States was engaged in a Civil War it was possible that Nathan was a soldier who died while in hospital and his body was sent home in hospital dress. However, I double-checked and found no record that Nathan Eakman served in either the Union or Confederate Armies.

I tried to think of manners of death which would leave the decedent's clothing missing or unfit for burial. If he was burned, it is unlikely that his body would have been dressed for the funeral as the coffin would not have been opened. If Nathan drowned, he may have kicked off his shoes prior to jumping into the water. There are all sorts of other fanciful possibilities but there is just no way of knowing how he died. There is no record of his death in Armstrong County aside from the probate records. "What Happened to Nathan Eakman's Clothes" remains a mystery.

There was one final bill for the funeral expenses of Nathan Eakman: $11 ($2410) for building his seven-foot long coffin.

That struck me as a rather long coffin until I did some research and discovered that the average coffin today is the same length. Further research indicated that the average American man today is only about an inch taller than the average man in the 1860s. So Nathan's seven-foot long coffin wasn't an extraordinary size. It is interesting that the cabinetmaker specified the length of the coffin, but perhaps he had different prices for different sizes.

It was also interesting to note that Hannah spent nearly 10% of her inheritance on burying her husband. Why would she spend such a large amount of money on burying Nathan but not spend any money on a headstone to mark his grave? (there is no indication of the location of Nathan's burial and no record of a marker being placed)

Nathan Eakman was an enigma in life. We only know that he existed because his name appeared on his son's death certificate, and because we found these records regarding the probate of Nathan's estate.

But even his death was surrounded in mystery. Where and how (and precisely when) did he die? Why did he need brand-new socks and shoes and a shirt and a tie for his burial? Why did Hannah spend so much money on his funeral but didn't mark his grave?

A Moving Place of Birth

John Hart was the eldest son of Martin and Ann Hart (actually the surname was "Ehrhardt" but the enumerator got it wrong). They immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1832 and settled in Virginia. Later, they moved to Maryland, and then on to Missouri, which is where I met them.

Martin was a prosperous farmer by 1850, and he owned real estate valued at $2900, or over $900,000 today. His wealthiest neighbor owned land worth about a third of that amount, so Martin, although he was not able to read or write English, could consider himself an American success story.

But it wasn't Martin's wealth that caught my attention. It was his son, John. He was, as I said, the eldest son, but he was not born in American. Nor was he born in Germany. Here, let me show the 1850 U.S. Census report and you can read it for yourself:

Do you see it?

John Hart was born at sea.

I hope that John has a sense of humor and enjoyed telling people where he was born. I can picture him talking to the official who came to register him for the draft during the Civil War. Mr. Abner Comingo, Provost Marshall, asked all of the serious questions: name, age, marital status. And John somberly replied. Then Marshall Comingo asked the one John was secretly waiting for: place of birth. And with a straight face John replied "On the ocean."

Oh how I hope that it went something like that. And that John had a good laugh.

And I hope that the Provost Marshall had a good laugh, too.

Family history is fun that way. You never know who or what you are going to find. Sometimes it's a man who was born at sea.