Gone With the Wind

Historical novels give valuable insight into the lives of people who lived in certain times. A good author puts a lot of research into the history of the places and events in which the characters are placed. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is such a novel. Her thorough research provides lesson after lesson into the history of Reconstruction in Georgia--lessons that are not taught in public schools. Setting aside the loathsome characters of the hero and heroine, I recommend this book for anyone desiring a clearer picture of what really went on in the years during and after the War between the States.

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(novel).

See What Our Family Was Up to During

. . . The Reconstruction of the Southern States

1865-1920
Deckner, Garvin, Madden, Meigs, Moore, Nicholas, Pucket, Reagan, Rowland, Thaden

Much of our family lived during the time of Reconstruction in the South after the War Between the States. Among the various families, there were some very interesting things which occurred.

The Scots-Irish families of Moore, Garvin, and Madden lived in the Upcountry of South Carolina. The men in the family had made a fair contribution and some, the ultimate sacrifice, during the war preceding Reconstruction even though none owned slaves. Their livelihood was in the land, and even though their carefully saved Confederate money was now only good for the wood stove, they probably survived well enough after the war since Union troops did not harass this area on a large scale. Their frustration was felt, however, in the fact that, as former Confederates, they were kept from voting in any of the elections to determine the new political leadership for their district and state.

William H. Moore, a small child during the war, later owned a mercantile store in the town of Seneca. During Reconstruction, he did quite well. He had a beautiful white house built a few blocks away from the store on the edge of town, and his three lovely daughters, Mary, Nannie, and Willie Fay, took music lessons, helped out in the store, and went to college. They later became school teachers. Like so many folks from the Upcountry, Will’s son, Luther, found his opportunity in east Texas, where he raised his family. In 1920 and at the age of 25, Nannie was caught up in a whirlwind romance with a man twenty years her senior. Their marriage ended six years later with his death.

In the neighboring state of Georgia, the Meigs, Reagan, and Pucket families found themselves in a worse situation. The Union troops were not at all easy on the folks in Georgia. They went through towns, such as Rome and Newnan, destroying bridges and railroads, thus isolating them from the rest of civilization. They burned homes and cotton bales leaving many homeless and penniless. They ransacked the farms of everything edible and any valuables that could be sold later, leaving the families to starve. Newly freed African field hands left the farms as there was no more work or food and congregated about the Union soldiers, who were garrisoned in the towns imposing Martial Law. Since newly found freedom for former slaves included exemption from the usual law enforcement, they often engaged in lawless behavior.

The Pucket family farmed around the town of Newnan and had owned a few slaves prior to the war. It is suspected that Rebecca (Pucket) Rowland was given a female slave at the time of her marriage, who became a house maid and continued to stay with the widowed Rebecca during and after the war.

Nancy Reagan and her daughter, Rachel Meigs were also widowed before the war. They lived together in Rome raising Rachel’s son, William, and her younger siblings. They stayed in Rome during the rebuilding of that town and were taken care of by Rachel’s brother James, who remained unmarried throughout his life. Both mother and daughter were deeply religious, and at Rachel’s death it was recorded that she saw Jesus and remarked how He had come too soon.

Rachel’s son, William, had moved to Newnan and found a bride shortly before the war. He was the publisher and editor of a small newspaper called The Southern Literary Companion which, no doubt, conveyed anti-Union sentiments. Reconstruction found him a veteran of the war and struggling to survive with his wife and five small children. His newspaper shop was most likely destroyed.

Meanwhile, two Germans moved to Atlanta as soon as the war was over. Frederick Deckner and his family seemed to be doing quite well in Wisconsin, but at the war’s end they packed up for Atlanta. Interestingly, his two oldest sons, William and Charles were Union veterans. Frederick must have seen the vision of opportunity like so many carpetbaggers of the day looking for cheap land on which to establish themselves and their businesses. Unfortunately this land was confiscated from the prior owners and sold cheaply. At that time the only buyers came from the northern states as the Southerners had no money. In this way, Reconstruction of the South could be facilitated with thousands of Yankees moving in.

Herman Thaden,  the other German and recent immigrant, also found himself in Atlanta, and he soon hooked up with the Deckner family. Not only did he marry one of Frederick’s many daughters, Pauline, he also established himself in the community, alongside her brother, Charles, as a horticulturist. In addition to their farm acreages north of Atlanta, Herman owned greenhouses in which he grew flowers to be sold from his florist shop, and the Deckners raised vegetables, which were sold in the family's truck farming business. Both Herman and Charles belonged to the Horticulture Society and often gave speeches regarding farming and gardening.

About 1875, William Meigs moved his family up to the newly rebuilt Atlanta, where he found employment with another printer. His last child, Mattie Love, was born here. Tragically, he was killed in his mid-40s by a moving train as he was crossing the tracks on foot in the rail yard. Mattie was just four years old.

Mattie, the daughter of a Rebel soldier, grew into a lovely young woman and married Charles, the son of the well-to-do Herman Thaden and grandson of a carpetbagger. Charles worked for his father in his box factory and had four children with Mattie, the second of whom was stillborn. Like her father, Mattie’s life was sadly cut short in 1915 when she was hit by a car on a rainy night as she was walking home from a church meeting. She was only 37 years old.

For some years after the turn of the century, Herman dabbled in inventions. He patented some that were useful for farming, and he also patented certain devices to aid in vertical flight, which was still in its experimental stage. At the same time he investigated Eastern Mysticism, being unhappy with his Lutheran upbringing. He looked forward to visits from the Hindu guru, who gave speeches regarding this religion. And interestingly, just prior to the World War, he found himself under an over-zealous investigation for traitorous behavior due to alleged anti-American statements. It is suspected that nothing ever came of this investigation.

Shortly after Mattie’s death, the bereaved Charles Thaden moved to Jacksonville, Florida, taking his teenage son, also named Herman, with him. His two young daughters remained in Atlanta with relatives. Charles remarried and Herman became a night watchman. At this time, the Jacksonville fathers were making efforts in their own town’s reconstruction by inviting immigrants, who were streaming into Ellis Island, to consider making Jacksonville their new home.

By 1920, there was a sizable colony of Syrian merchants in Jacksonville operating business of all sorts. It was the young Herman Thaden’s job to walk his beat throughout the night, shining his flashlight into the store windows and rattling the front doors to make sure they were locked. Perhaps this is how he met his future wife, Angelina Nicholas, a young Syrian American girl.

Image from https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/02/the-civil-war-part-1-the-places/100241/.

The Depletion of Frank De Mayo's Wealth

Undated article, and no place: "Gnawed at Dice Riches"
Pay-off Fees and Lawyers Cut into De Mayo's Money.
The $230,000 Accumulated in 1917 Went to Varied "Takers," Ex-bootlegger Tells Bankruptcy Referee.

Frank De Mayo, the former "bootleg king," who used to boast that "everybody had a price," was on the grill today before the referee in bankruptcy, harking back to his prosperous bootlegging days to explain the fading of a dice fortune, estimated by him at $230,000 at one time.

De Mayo has been trying to explain to Henry A. Bundschu, referee, and the trustee of his estate, that he is broke; that his small fortune, which reached a peak in 1917 of a quarter million, is now gone.

Bundschu is trying to trace the disposition of De Mayo's estate and gather up any missing assets to satisfy his creditors. De Mayo filed a voluntary petition in bankruptcy July 12, stating he had only $1,000 left of his own to meet debts and judgments of more than $300,000.

The former booze runner, Bundschu learned today, would have most persons believe his fortune was spent in "fixing" public officials, paying off fines and compensating lawyers for getting him out of trouble in the prohibition era.

Testimony by De Mayo before  Bundschu discloses he had $250,000 in 1917 when he was 27 years old, realized by dice games and other gambling in pool halls he operated between 1907 and 1917.

In 1928, when he became involved with federal authorities over his illicit booze traffic, his fortune began to dwindle, he told Bundschu. He testified he paid the late Frank Walsh and other lawyers a $50,000 retainer fee for an unsuccessful effort to "wiggle" him out of the clutches of Uncle Sam.

During the Prohibition era, De Mayo told Bundsch, he spent much money in "fixing" public officials, and used his last $100,000 in "trying to keep out of jail." He finally received a federal penitentiary sentence and served it.

De Mayo has told the federal bankruptcy court he gave Mrs. Bessie De Mayo, his wife, large amounts on many occasions when he "was in the money."

In 1931, after his release from prison, he went in the oil business, forming the De Mayo Oil company, and bought up leases on 3,400 acres of oil land in Eastern Texas with his wife's money, he has stated. He paid $85,000 for the lease options out of one-third of the oil profits in eight years, according to his statements to Bundschu.

Mrs. De Mayo owns the oil company, which, he says, he manages for her. The late Casimir J. Welch, East Fifteenth street Democratic leader, was a partner for a time in the De Mayo Oil company, according to De Mayo. Records show Mrs. De Mayo in 1931 invested $56,000 in the Muskogee Natural Gas company and later sold her interests for $70,000.

De Mayo even capitalized on liquor investments after repeal of the eighteenth amendment, he says. In 1933, he sold warehouse receipts he had obtained on legal whisky at a profit of $5,000, which now, he told his interrogator, is gone. He also said he made a profit on $5,000 on Dominion of Canada bonds in 1933, and in 1934 he lost $40,000 in an Edgerton, Mo., distillery failure.

Then, in 1933 and 1935, he invested some of his wife's earnings in two cabinet manufacturing concerns, realizing a profit for her, he related, of about $22,000. He stated his wife's present income is $25,000 a year from the Texas oil leases.

[$230,000 in 1935 is equivalent to $4,000,000 in 2016. $25,000 in 1935 is equivalent to $438,000. The image of Frank De Mayo comes from nationalcrimesyndicate.com.]

City Directories

I have been working with city directories from Kansas City, Missouri, during the years of 1891 to 1915.  They are very easy for me to get to because they are located in one of the many databases within my public library's special collections.  I can view pdf files of each page of the directory, save them to a thumb drive or print them right there.  I like to have paper copies of the city directories so I can shuffle them around at will.  Many of our families are listed in the Kansas City directories, but currently I am studying the De Mayo family.  Frank De Mayo, the elder, first appears in the 1891 directory.  This supports evidence that he arrived in this country in 1890.  It would appear he went straight to Kansas City after landing in the U.S.  As the years go by, other De Mayos appear in the list showing the same residential address as Frank.  These are most likely his children.  Upon further study, another family starts to form around Vito Demaio.  One of his children turns out to be Albert, who was also listed as one of the pall bearers for Frank's son.  This is a good indication that Frank and Vito are related.  By following the directories from year to year, I can see that Vito died around 1904.  With that information I can look for a death certificate that may give me clues to his possible relationship to Frank.  With the addresses listed in the directory, I can go to old maps to see where these places are located and their proximity to the churches, parks, and places of employment.  City directories are both fun and informative.  I have spent hours with these already.

A Glimpse of Little Italy

Kansas City is one of several towns harboring a Little Italy community.  Many Italian immigrants called this small triangular grid, in Kansas City's north end, home in the 1900s and 1910s.  Eventually, many Italians moved from the enclave to other parts of the city.  But in its heyday, the neighborhood of narrow streets bustled with activity.  Men played bocce ball in empty lots. Many families kept a goat in their yard.  The residents were hard workers.  Mom and I were curious about where the DeMayo family lived after arriving in America so we took a stroll to see what culture we could find.  A funeral was just at its close when we walked by the Holy Rosary Catholic Church.  As the dark, stout mourners exited the heavy wooden doors, they bid each other goodbye with a kiss on each cheek.  This little neighborhood is now home to some Viet Namese immigrants and the appetizing smell of Asian food hung in the air, trapped between the close buildings.  I bet when the DeMayos lived there, the smell of marinara sauce greeted the noses of passers-by.  Many of the business still bear Italian names and even the fire hydrants are painted in Italian colors. 

Good Times

While in Kansas City, my mother took me to Askew Avenue, where she lived as a little girl in one of the rooms of this house with her daddy and mama. She recounted many happy memories here. This little house was shared by three families, and my mother lived in the middle part of the house accessed by a private entrance, now made into a bay window.

The boarded-up house, now condemned, sits on a corner lot.

Mom walked one block and through a passageway under Monroe Street to reach her elementary school, also now boarded up.

Crossing Askew Avenue was 27th Street, the main street through the neighborhood, lined with mom and pop shops. My mother went on errands for her mama to the little grocery store a few doors down behind their house.

The neighborhood of painted houses and trimmed yards was once shaded in safety by leafy canopies atop gigantic trees. Today, the sad homes and forgotten school await their fate in an almost treeless ghost town of boarded stores. There is an eerie, uneasy feeling in the neighborhood now. There is no sign of life until a small car slows in curiousity and then speeds past us.

It's sad how pleasant things change. Mom's daddy died and she and her mother moved away from her home and her school and her relatives. She can never really go back to this happy place on Askew Avenue for it has gone the way of many old city neighborhoods and no longer exists. But the memories of a happier, simpler, safer time are pleasant.

Missouri River Bottom Land

Nestled in Platte County, Missouri, in the bottoms, under an overcast sky heavy with moisture, lies a small parcel of twenty acres that was once owned by Hiram McDaniel in the 1850s. Where the ground drops off to the west is the life-giving Missouri River. Kansas trims the horizon. Bluffs rise from the bottoms to the east. A neglected house, weathered brown, sleeps on this land. How long has it been there? Who lived in it? There once was a house on this land filled with the purposeful movements of Janettie McDaniel and chatter from the children, Lucretia, John Hiram, and James. Today, remnants of dried stalks and cobs indicate that corn is grown in the dark gray clay. Did Hiram grow corn, too? The bottoms continue to be home to hard working farmers like the McDaniels.

Separating the two Mary Albertsons

Imagine my dismay at finding our Mary A. Albertson combined with another Mary A. Albertson. Our gal had the right parents but was hooked up with the wrong spouse. The other Mary had that other spouse but was linked to our Mary's parents. What a mess!! Read how I straightened that out. In the meantime, the two are combined into one until the owners of those published family trees make the necessary adjustments.

Mormon Pioneers in the Family

Tarlton Lewis was a member of Brigham Young's first company of saints to arrive in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847. That company consisted mostly of men, their families remaining behind in Nebraska until the next spring. Sure enough, Tarlton was crossing the plains again in 1848, this time with his wife and two small children. Mary Younger Mayberry and her husband and two grown sons were also in the same company with the Lewises. In 1846, Haden Wells Church joined the Mormon Battallion in Nebraska, but didn't make it all the way to San Diego as planned. Instead, he became part of a detachment of sick soldiers who wintered over in Pueblo, Colorado. When the weather cleared, the soldiers, in company with saints from Mississippi, headed north to the Mormon Trail and then continued on into the Valley on the heels of Brigham Young's first company. None of these are direct ancestors but rather, close relatives just the same--just many generations removed.

Haden Wells Church-->Abraham M. Church-->Thomas A. Church
Daryl E. Hahn-->Hazel R. Lutes-->Robert E. Lutes-->Tennessee E. Younger-->Mary E. Church-->Charles C. Church--Thomas A. Church

Tarlton Lewis-->Neriah Lewis-->David Lewis
Nancy E. Thaden-->Nannie I. Moore-->William H. Moore-->Melvina Murphy-->Elizabeth Alexander-->Elizabeth Lewis-->David Lewis

Mary E. Younger-->Thomas Younger
Daryl E. Hahn-->Hazel R. Lutes-->Robert E. Lutes-->Tennessee E. Younger-->John W. Younger-->James N. Younger-->Thomas Younger

Trouble on the Border

The Punitive Expedition in 1916 was a military operation to secure U.S. borders from revolutionary bandits leaking over the border of Mexico and attacking U.S. towns and citizens. Poncho Villa was the Mexican folk hero of that time and the criminal who was the subject of a hot pursuit by both the American and Mexican presidents. Harry Boyd Kline was 21 years old and a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard when Woodrow Wilson called up the guard from across the nation to assist General Pershing's Army at the border. Reading old newspaper accounts of the progress of that operation causes one to reflect on the similarites of today's border situation. It took awhile for Harry's unit to organize and get equipped for the mission, and so it arrived at El Paso six months after Wilson's initial call in June. The guard units were not required to cross the border as the regular army did but rather, stayed on the alert, from the U.S. side, for attacks from Villa's bandits.

I am in the process now of seeking more information about Harry's specific unit, the 13th Infantry Regiment, Company I, and what their specific roll was in this military operation.

Interestingly, upon the arrival of the 13th back home to Bloomsburg, Pa., Harry's cousins in Kansas City were registering for the draft, as did Harry.

Harry B. Kline-->Mary E. Bright-->Richard B. Bright.
Nancy E. Bright-->Fred B. Bright-->Joseph F. Bright-->Richard B. Bright.

Daughters of the Confederacy Need Not Apply

I've just had myself a good chuckle. In researching for another book project, I ran across information about the Union Veterans Union (UVU), which was organized in 1886 for Union veterans, who did not necessarily agree with the practices of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), also organized for Union veterans. Even though the UVU was also open to sons of the veterans, membership eventually fizzled out. In honor of Union veteran ancestors, the UVU has been re-formed.

Check out these membership requirements: "We do not seek your affiliation if you belong to any organization which has been recognized as racist, white supremacist, or divisive in their practices or teachings. This includes, but is not limited to, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the League of the South, the Southern Party, the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), Confederate Reenactors Assoc., KKK, National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), or other Southern "Heritage" group which may support the principles of any racist organization or those principles of any other such organization as may have been identified by the Southern Poverty LawCenter and listed in their current annual 'Intelligence Report.' "

Whew! This means if I become a member of the UDC, I will not be welcomed in the UVU. While membership in the SCV and UDC requires a direct or colateral kinship to a Confederate veteran, everyone can belong to the UVU as long as they are not racist. This is interesting because the original UVU did not even include all veterans; only combat veterans were welcomed. Membership requirements in the Confederate groups do not include a list of organizations I can not belong to. The UVU's objection to the SUVCW, what should be their sister group, is that they supported South Carolina's right to fly the Confederate flag on the State House. This is what started the war in the first place, the issue over states' rights. It sounds like the UVU is practicing their own version of discrimination.

Has anyone told the UVU that the war is over? We're just all trying to get along now as fellow Americans. Besides, like myself, many of us are descendants of both Yankees and Rebels.

See "History of the UVU," http://www.uvuinc.4t.com/about.html
and "History of the Union Veterans Union," http://www.unionveteransunion.org/4_1UVU_HISTORY.html

The Rebel Yell

Have you ever heard of the Rebel Yell? Have you ever wondered what it really sounded like? Go to You Tube's Confederate Rebel Yell.

Slander in the First Degree

Frank DeMayo: For the Record

A good practice for genealogists is to google the name of an ancestor to see if anything about him has been published on the web. A search for the name Frank DeMayo turned up some rather disconcerting information as to Frank “Chee Chee” DeMayo’s involvement in the Kansas City Mafia. A few of these web sites are mere repeats of the text that comes straight from a Wikipedia article, which cites no sources but offers a link to The American Mafia, "Kansas City Crime Bosses." This web site actually reports that “though some believe he rose to lead the Kansas City Mafia in the late 1920s, it seems unlikely because others had power and prestige in the city during that period.”¹

Now I don’t normally write about the negative things in my ancestors’ lives. However, this allegation of a Mafia connection has been passed off as fact and published to the world. I feel that reference to Uncle Frank’s involvement in the Mafia needs to equally be addressed.

Uncle Frank’s niece, Nancy, knew him when she was a little girl. She had also heard talk of his imprisonment in the Atlanta Penitentiary, though she knew not his crime. A search for Frank DeMayo on Footnote.com turned up an old Bureau of Investigation case in which Uncle Frank had been investigated for bootlegging. It mentioned a prison sentence in the Leavenworth Penitentiary. Nancy obtained a copy of his Leavenworth prison file, which made no mention of the Mafia. I later found newspaper articles out of Missouri detailing his trial prior to his incarceration in Leavenworth. Although the articles report that he was eventually found guilty of violating Prohibition, he was never connected to the Mafia. We still do not know why he was sentenced to the Atlanta Pen.

While it is true that the Mafia didn’t really gain power in this country until the days of Prohibition, when they accumulated a vast amount of funds through bootlegging, the newspaper describes Frank “Chee Chee” DeMayo only as the Bootlegger King of the second largest bootlegging ring in the country. For Wikipedia and its copycat web articles, to report that Uncle Frank was a member of the Mafia is nothing short of slander. This serves to set the record straight.

Nancy concedes, “I just know that the man we read about in those reports is not the same Uncle Frank that I knew. Yet bootlegging is not the worst thing that happened in those days. He must have really repented and changed his life. I choose to remember the man I knew my Uncle to be during my childhood. He was a loving husband to Aunt Bess, a good father to [his son], and a great grandfather to [his grandchildren]. He was generous and kind to my family (and he loved dogs).”

¹http://www.onewal.com/maf-b-kc.html, par. 3.

Genocide During the Civil War

Though the term genocide did not exist before 1944, I do believe General Sherman was trying to commit just that on the Southern population during his famed march to the sea. His comments to his wife and fellow soldiers are no secret. They have been published often and show that he was certainly bent on destroying the people of the South.

I have brought up this notion of Sherman and genocide to a couple of people in my circle, whom I consider to be very intelligent. Both hesitate to strap the already shameful Sherman with the crime of genocide.

Consider the definition of genocide as was adopted in 1948 by the United Nations in the wake of the Jewish Holocaust.

[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[1]

After conducting a study of Sherman’s war practices enacted upon his enemies, there can be no question that Sherman would have been tried as a war criminal had he dared to carry out his campaigns today. Even his own fellow generals abhorred his tactics.

As recently as 2008, one scholar likened Sherman’s practices to “war crimes and probably genocide.”[2] It is obvious that Sherman’s army killed and wounded Confederate soldiers. But, with the able men off in other places fighting the war, Sherman rampaged his way through the South. It is no secret that Sherman encouraged his men to destroy everything in their path after they had foraged for themselves. This left the women and children and old men with no food, no livestock, no crops, no cotton bales (a source of income), no valuables for which to sell, and in many instances, no homes. Such destitution brought about starvation, a sure way to prevent the births of anymore Southerners.

One might argue the last element of the definition—that of forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. While it is true that Sherman did not remove the children from their Southern parents, he did cause that the children were forced from their homes, with their parents, while carrion from the north moved in. This resulted in the desired outcome of watering down the Southern population.

In my opinion, there is no doubt that General Sherman was trying to rid the country of Southerners through criminal means. It is true that war is hell and many unfortunate things happen to the innocent. However, there is a moral code most men live by but Sherman was dispossessed of any morals. He was not the great military mind his fans set him up to be. The hero they worship was nothing short of a war criminal, a disgrace to his uniform, no one to be lauded or honored.


[1] “What is Genocide?” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 4 May 2009. 13 Jul. 2009
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007043, par. 4

[2] Allan D. Cooper, The Geography of Genocide, University Press of America, 2008, p. 150

The Other Side of the Coin

As I read stories and watch movies about the War Between the States, I am disappointed that the full story is not told. Reference is often made to the Union prisoners’ awful conditions at the Andersonville prison, but I’ve never heard mention of Rock Island prison, home to 12,000 Confederate prisoners. Complaints among Andersonville inmates included lack of food and medical care. It should be noted that the Confederate soldiers guarding that prison, and serving elsewhere suffered from the same lack of food and medical care. They couldn’t offer their prisoners what they themselves did not have. The Union Army had done an excellent job of cutting these necessities off from the South. Not only did the tactic succeed in crippling the Confederacy, it also starved their own men. The excuse at Rock Island? Rations were cut, as ordered by the U.S. government in response to the treatment of Union prisoners at Andersonville.[1]

In the end, 17% of the Confederate prisoners died at Rock Island compared with the 27% of Federal prisoners, who died at Andersonville.[2] If those numbers lessen the severity of Rock Island Prison, consider a lesser know prison camp in Federal territory that has been conveniently swept under the rug by the very critics of Andersonville, who also point out that Andersonville prisoners were cruelly mistreated. Camp Douglas was located in Chicago and had the highest mortality rate of all Union prisoner of war camps.[3]

"Prisoners were deprived of clothing to discourage escapes. Many wore sacks with head and arm holes cut out; few had underwear. Blankets to offset the bitter northern winter were confiscated from the few that had them. The weakest froze to death. The Chicago winter of 1864 was devastating. The loss of 1,091 lives in only four months was heaviest for any like period in the camp's history, and equaled the deaths at the highest rate of Andersonville from February to May, 1864. Yet, it is the name of Andersonville that burns in infamy, while there exists a northern counterpart of little shame."[4]

The next time you read a book or watch a movie that mentions Andersonville, remember Camp Douglas.


[1] Brenda Smelser Hay, “Rock Island Civil War Prison,” http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_rock_island.html, 2008, par. 5.
[2] Ibid, par. 8.
[3] Brenda Smelser Hay, “Camp Douglas Prison,” http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_camp_douglas.html, 2008, par. 1.
[4] Ibid, par. 3. See also “Camp Douglas” at http://geocities.com/BourbonStreet/2757/issues/camp.htm. Though the author of this web page seems to have had some trouble mastering HTML, his material appears to be well researched. After reading this account of Camp Douglas, Andersonville will not seem so unique.

We may NOT be Irish!!

This notion would be something that would take some getting used to. My kids grew up on St. Patrick's Day corned beef and cabbage, soda bread, and celtic music playing while we ate it. We loved our tradition.

Before writing this post, I ran the idea by my mother, who is not adverse to this possibility. So here goes:

I have recently learned a little bit about Irish immigration in my family history class. Without studying it any further, which I fully intend to do, I believe the history goes like this:

In a previous post I explained that the Scotch Irish came to America from Ireland in the late 1600s and early 1700s. They were of Scotch blood but had been living in Ireland at the time they immigrated. Over here, they were sometimes called Irish and sometimes called Scotch-Irish. They were Prostestant. More often than not, those British sounding names belonged to Scotch-Irish, English, and Welsh if they came over during this time frame. They also followed certain migration patterns.

The Irish, most assuredly Catholics, did not start immigrating until around 1820. I haven't double checked all the family data, but it's looking like all of the British folks in my mother's, father's, and husband's lineages are Scotch-Irish and not Irish at all!

Therefore, I did not wear green today.

Scots-Irish vs. Scotch-Irish

We hear both terms, but which is correct? I have chosen to use the term Scotch-Irish. The current popluation of Scotland prefers to refer to themselves as Scots. But, they have very little if anything to do with those people from Scotland, who moved to Ireland and later to America. The term Scotch-Irish was used in America as early as the mid-1700s to describe a certain segment of the American population, and as one scholar on the subject suggests "...in this country [USA], where they have been called Scotch-Irish for over two hundred years, it would be absurd to give them a name by which they are not known here... Here their name is Scotch-Irish; let us call them by it." (qtd. in Wikipedia and attributed to Wayland F. Dunaway, The Scotch-Irish of Colonial America, University of North Carolina Press, 1944.)

Read this essay, "Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish: What's in a Name?", for a deeper look into the reason why Scotch-Irish is the correct term.

Read About the Scotch-Irish

Here are links to a articles about the Scotch-Irish.

Why You Need to Know the Scots-Irish
Scots-Irish
The Scotch-Irish in America

Mary Artiemissa was not Elly May

I have been stewing for the past couple of days over the last lecture in my family history class. The subject was the social history of the Scotch-Irish culture in America. I absorbed everything the teacher delivered because much of my ancestry lies within the hills of the Upcountry of South Carolina, in names such as Murphy, Moore, Madden, and Garvin.

The teacher, Katherine Scott Sturdevant, pretty well-known among historians and genealogists, began with an overview of where the Scotch-Irish came from by describing their existence in Scotland and their migration over to Ireland, noting the Scots were a warring people and not adverse at all to removing the current residents of Ireland in order to claim the land. She compared it to what happened on this continent to the Indians by the large amount of Scotch-Irish immigrants.

She then painted a picture of these immigrants--products of their wild and barbarian ancestry. She says that by settling in the hills of America's back country, they remained in this wild state for generations. Even to this day, in the more rural and remote parts of the country, she says, those of Scotch-Irish heritage tend to be earthy, stubborn, rebellious, and unrefined.

She mentioned figures such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. These were Kentucky and Tennessee frontiersmen. I read a description recently of the typical backwoodsman which wasn't very flattering. It was written long ago by one who would have met men like Boone and Crockett. I'd like to find that quote again.

Ms. Sturdevant gave several examples of the hillbilly way of life, none of them flattering. When I asked if there was anything positive about these people, she jokingly said these people would think there was nothing wrong with their culture and the problem would lie in the one asking such a thing. Although she said Li'l Abner and the Clampett family were stereotypes, she referred to them often when describing the "real" hillbilly. And though sources will mention South Carolina as one of the largest concentrations of Scotch-Irish, she focused only on Kentucky and the Ozarks.

Of all the U.S. presidents of Scotch-Irish extraction, she only mentioned Andrew Jackson, by now a very unpopular president by politically correct standards. She called him the people's president, for during his time, he was very popular among the people, a large majority of who were Scotch-Irish.

I kept thinking back to what I know about my own people. Granted, I don't have a whole lot of details. I do know that my Great Grandpa William Moore owned a mercantile store in a town. He lived in that town in a beautiful white house. His lovely daughters received college educations. Certainly they lived a civilized life. And I do know that his wife, Mary Artiemissa, married late in her life, simply because she stayed at home to take care of her father and younger brothers after their mother died. I have trouble picturing her exposing her shoulders and thighs in the effort to "catch a man," as did Elly May, Daisy Mae, and Daisy Duke. She was more modest, like Mary Ellen Walton, and her daughter Nannie was more like Christy, the Appalachian school teacher. Nevertheless, I am curious now to discover details about their progenitors and just exactly how their families fit into historical context.

Ms. Studevant herself has Scotch-Irish ancestry. Regardless of how she portrayed these people in her lecture, she was talking about her own people. I took this into consideration as I asked her how, then, do we write the ugly truth about our ancestors without offending anyone in our families. Perhaps I was too offended myself to hear her reply, but I did get this much: They are merely a product of their ancestry--the barbaric Scots. When I write about my people, I like to celebrate the positive. I may find I have to mention a fact that is undesirable, but I try not to leave it at that. Explantions as to why something negative might have occurred are always helpful in my opinion.

I am not yet comfortable in assuming my Scotch-Irish ancestors were these undesirable folk portrayed in my class. I have not yet determined if Ms. Studevant is one of these historians who re-writes history. I like to find history written very close to the time it occurred or by one who lived it. She advised me, though, that history written nowadays has been more thoroughly researched and, therefore, is more trustworthy.

I need to do a lot more of my own research before I feel comfortable in believing anything I'm told about these tough, courageous, lovers of freedom and before I begin to write their story.