Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the United States Civil War

I can't believe 150 years ago, the Civil War was just starting. It seems like ages ago, yet in the realm of family trees, it's just a few short generations back. Ancestry and Footnote both did free access "weekends" (though they lasted an entire week) on all Civil War records last week from Apr 8th to Apr 14th. Footnote also threw in the 1860 census records for free. I spent all 7 days downloading as much as I possibly could.

At first, for the Civil War records, I was searching exact names of soldiers I already knew had fought and linking the info right away to their profile on Geni. I quickly realized how much time I was wasting with this method. Instead, I switched to simply searching a few surnames and then once finding someone matching that surname, I searched all other people in the same infantry for other surnames I recognized as also possibly being related. Now, after a very long, obsession-filled week, I have two folders FULL of documents for hundreds of soldiers that may or may not be related to myself or my husband. I have the task now over the next couple of weeks (or months) of sorting through all of the information and connecting whatever I can.

Amazingly, I was able to gather all of the information I set forth to find in the seven days, and I even had a couple of hours left on Thursday to download some addition census records in hopes of finding in-laws of in-laws living down the street from each other and whatnot.

Someone on Geni also had the bright idea of starting a massive Civil War project on Geni. Underneath this master project, there will be related projects for both troops and battles. I have already started a few of them myself:

• 1st North Carolina Junior Reserves
• 22nd North Carolina Infantry
• 26th North Carolina Infantry
• 27th North Carolina Infantry
• 33rd North Carolina Infantry
• 44th North Carolina Infantry

There are many other troops on which I downloaded information, but those few either had definite links to me or my husband or required somewhat immediate attention due to their importance in the Civil War or specific battles. So far all six of these groups are just bare bones, but I'm hoping to get them more fully completed as I continue to go through the documents I downloaded.

I must admit though, my main goal for doing all of this Civil War research is really to find some connections that were made merely by fighting with each other side by side in the war. Families that married each other, families that moved due to new land they discovered or land they felt connected to, and how family dynamics were changed when a father or brother left and died during the war. These stories are my main goals.

Also, a new task I'm tackling is finding out relatives' blood types. It started with my mother-in-law talking about donating blood and why my brother-in-law couldn't give doubles (he's type A, a type too common to need more than a pint per person). She told me she is type AB+. Her husband is type O+. She also told me her dad was AB-. I find this all very interesting. That means that my husband is type AO+ (the O of course being somewhat "recessive" when it comes to typing). This means, myself also being AO+, that our children will either be type A or type O. The fact that my mother-in-law is AB though is what really got me interested. I only know of types A and O in my immediate family, so the thought of others having been out there is something I would like to know. This will be a difficult task, and I doubt I will have much luck, but until I reach a very hard brick wall on this subject, I will keep plugging away at it.

I think that's pretty much it in the recent realm of genealogy for me. I shall be back soon with, hopefully, more news!