For us, studying the American Civil War is about as good as it gets. This fascinating time in the development of the United States in many ways was the defining event that shaped who we are as a nation today.

From our current position in history it is difficult to completely visualize the time of the Civil War. The United States was young, and in many ways still an experiment in nation building. The Constitution specifically allowed states the decision to "drop out and go their own way" even though this had never been tested. There was a great deal of stress over the issue of slavery and Congressional compromises had unsuccessfully tried to find a compromise to keep peace among the different points of view.

In other ways the Country was very different. There were only 34 states and expansion of the western territory was a big issue. (When you read about the armies operating in the "western theatre they are talking about Mississippi and Louisiana, not California). We were an agrarian society very dependent on family farms and farm labor. Families were large, travel difficult, and many people died from disease or hardship.

The list of differences goes on and on. But what was not different was loyalty, patriotism, and the enthusiasm for war that often closely follows significant political events. If your family had any ties in the southern states during 1860 then it is almost impossible to avoid military service. It has been estimated that the Confederacy mobilized as many as 80% of the available male population of fighting age during the war.

Our families were all in the South during the early part of the 1800s, so it follows that we will have large numbers of men who participated as soldiers. In fact we have identified almost 500 men who served in one capacity or another. Most were privates in some fighting unit, but that would have been normal for the era. And to further emphasize the Southern slant to our family, only 4 of these fought for the Union.

Records from the southern states are more difficult to obtain because of the devastation to many towns toward the end of the war. But we can identify with some accuracy who fought and the fighting unit they started with. Beyond that the records become sketchy. For that reason the Civil War section of the web site is primarily a list of fighting men organized alphabetically.

This month we posted that list and it can be access from the pages listing various wars and military service. But for us this is a jumping off point and not the end of the story. We have a number of Civil War era letters from the family and we will publish these in coming months, together with photographic copies of the actual letters, so watch for these.

Behind the scenes on the web site we are doing some extensive research as a part of the clean up of the cemetery section. While there is plenty of information there, it has been some time since we did a comprehensive search of reference materials.

We want the information we present to include the available knowledge in our primary states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama. So we are taking the time to go back through all our reference books on those states before posting again. Right now we are working on Jackson and Clarke Counties in Georgia and those efforts have turned up several hundred cemetery references that we missed over the years. The process is slow, but it will greatly benefit anyone looking for a burial location when we finish since it will combine the work of dozens of reference works.