The Blue and the Gray

Author: Mark W. Swarthout
Published on: March 23, 2001

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 the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is terrific! 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, 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.

Armed with this information there was only one thing left I could do, and that was send for the service record. I went to National Archives and Records Administration and requested the appropriate forms. Now at the site you can actually download a copy of the form, rather than have to send for the form itself. Filling it out, I put all of the information I had and sent it off. About three weeks later, I received a letter saying that the record I wanted was available and to send my check and the response to the address provided. A few more weeks later a packet arrived. I spread out the pages and looked through them, trying to see if it was a match. The enlistment paper was there, a standard printed form with the blanks filled in. Okay, nothing there that conflicted with the information I had from the cemetery index, the age matched his year of birth. There was a brief description of him, height, weight, hair and eye color. Occupation was listed as farmer, so that was okay.

There was one additional piece of information that matched. He had been wounded and the next of kin was listed as Lewis Swarthout, who was the father of the person I was looking for. But the real definitive connection didn't come until I actually visited John's grave just a few months ago. A Grand Army of the Republic badge marked his grave site. Still, that could easily be put there. The final confirmation was engraved on the back of his gravestone!

If only the person who had documented the cemetery had thought to include that in their records! It would have saved me a lot of effort. Talk about bringing a person to life! The double-sided bed card served as the entire medical record. About the size of a 3x5 index card, it listed his personal description, unit, date and location of the wound and what caused it. The other side was for the treatment, "Ball Removed." There was also a heavy line of X's above that entry. I scanned the copy into the computer and enlarged it and tried to decipher the writing. I was shocked to finally make it out. "Amputated/Middle Third." Talk about lucky! Not only did he survive Cold Harbor, he was able to keep his arm!

Want to know more about the unit your ancestor was with? James River Publications provides a long listing, by state, of the known unit histories. Sure enough, the 148th New York Volunteers has a book written about them, They Marched on Richmond, by George Shadman. Want another coincidence? George is married to the sister of the wife of one of my Swarthout cousins! It actually took an email to the author to find out that the last case of books had been sold to a historical society to track a copy down. An added bonus was that it was autographed! John Swarthout is listed in a number of the lists, and the place he fits into it all adds to the knowledge we have of him. There are also other publications related to the units such as diaries and letters. These stories and histories can give you a feel for what your ancestors went through. The hardships and other events that affected the unit adds to the color of the history

Other things to note:

The Union army in the Civil War, at least in New York, allowed a maximum age of forty-two. As a result, many soldiers listed their age at forty-two, even when they may have been several years older! The Confederate Army, as the war drew to a close, were drafting young boys and grandfathers into the ranks.

Some states conducted a census at times other then the Constitutionally mandated every ten years. New York State conducted one in 1865 that included a section asking about casualties and deaths related to the War.