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The Blue and the Gray

© Mark W. Swarthout

I have always considered the Civil War as one of the ugliest periods of American History. It was also one of the most colorful, with vast numbers of strange and unusual uniforms and new weaponry. The War of the Rebellion was one of the last major conflicts where columns of men and cavalry would charge forward enmass at the enemy. This war want a long way toward defining the United States. For a further treatment of why we Americans find this such an interesting war, may I suggest the book Confederates in the Attic, by Pulitzer winning author, Tony Horwitz. Though it has some crude language in places, it is a fascinating study of what the Civil War means to a large cross section of society.

So, how do you find out if one of your ancestors participated in the War of the Rebellion? There are lots of places to look online. The National Park Service has an extensive index, soon to contain over a million names of veterans of this horrendous conflict. The ability to search is great! The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System can be found at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/index.html Whenever I run across an index of soldiers, actually any index of any sort, such as the Civil War Index, I look for my last name. It isn't all that common, but appears more often then I would like in Central New York. I found that there was a John W. Swarthout who had fought with the 148th New York Volunteer Infantry.

Look at family pictures. Men in uniform were a common focal point for the early camera lenses. Veterans often wore their GAR medals in pictures taken after the war. Find any GAR medals in the family junk drawer? Pieces of brass marked with CSA? They could indicate that there was a connection. The GAR Medal was issued to all Union veterans and its distinctive shape easily shows up in the early pictures.

My Great Great Grandfather's name was John W. Swarthout. There were a number of Swarthouts in that area and there was more than one John W. Could it have been him? The age was about right, since he would have been nineteen at the outbreak of hostilities. I went out to my favorite search engine, Google, http://www.google.com, and put in 148th and New York. After wading through a number of matches, eventually I found the site of Wilson W. Simmons Jr., Town of Potter, NY Historian, at http://victorian.fortunecity.com/hampton... This site had all of the members of this unit listed. Nothing new, but it did mention he had been transferred to the 100th New York.

The copyright of the article The Blue and the Gray in North American Genealogy is owned by Mark W. Swarthout. Permission to republish The Blue and the Gray in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.