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Ancesto Stories for the Soul Of course I was on the lookout for the Wisconsin monument and the marker for John’s unit. And there they were! The Wisconsin monument was huge, towering hundreds of feet high, and it listed all of the soldiers in all of the units from that state who fought there. John’s name was among them, listed with Company A of the 14th Infantry Regiment. I can recall, even now, the eerie feeling I had as I looked at his name there among those of his comrades. The quest that began at some low level of interest nearly 30 years prior was now building to a crescendo that caused me to feel excited, nervous, and also filled with awe and respect. Seeing his name there caused me to feel connected to that historic place and time in a way I never thought possible. One half mile further on I found the marker that represented his unit’s place in the Union line. It was approximately here, in an assault on 22 May 1863, that my great-granduncle was killed. How it Ended (The Cemetery) The National Cemetery is at the northern end of the park on a high bluff overlooking the river, and at the place where the park road leaves the Union lines and doubles back to follow the Confederate positions. It is a large, tiered plot of ground that covers 116 acres. To appreciate the cemetery, one has to know some of its history. It is the final resting place of some 17,000 Union soldiers. This is the largest number of Union burials among all of the national cemeteries. (The Confederate dead are buried in cemeteries in the city itself, or removed to other locations closer to the soldier’s homes.) The Cemetery was not established and made available for burials until 1866, three years after the action at Vicksburg. All during the Civil War, hasty burials were made near the places where battles were fought. At the end of the War, those soldiers were re-interred at national cemeteries. Most of the soldiers buried at Vicksburg came from temporary burial sites in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Record keeping was not at its best during wartime and grave locations were often lost, and compounding that, the identities of those whose bodies were fortunate enough to be recovered were also often lost. In the south during the campaign for control of the Mississippi River there was even a further compounding problem: the River would periodically overflow its banks and wash the hastily dug graves away. It was often simply unidentified piles of bones that were collected and buried at the national cemetery. At Vicksburg, 75 percent of the dead are unidentified: almost 13,000 graves. I was suddenly very thankful for the twists of fate that caused John’s grave to be among the known. Those that are unknown are marked with small rectangular blocks of stone while the graves of those whose name is known have traditional tablet-like headstones. It is tremendously sobering to look over the cemetery and see so few headstones. I could only imagine the anguish of the families of those fallen soldiers, families who never had the closure brought by burying their loved ones, or of even knowing for sure where their graves were located. But John was among the known dead. This was probably due to the fact that he was killed at Vicksburg itself, ground controlled by a Union victory, and ground high above the river and thus protected from it. The rangers at the visitor’s center were helpful in locating his grave. I had the number on the 54 © Ev e r t o n’s Ge n e a l o g i c a l He l p e r Ja n ua ry/Fe b r u a r y 2009
Ancestor Stories for the Soul headstone from the Internet searches, and they had its general location on a map. It took only about 15 minutes of wandering the appropriate portion of the cemetery to find the marker. His grave was one of the few in that part of the cemetery that actually had a tablet headstone; most of those around him were the small, square blocks of the unknowns. The marker was a simple one: it stated just his name and his state. But I was satisfied. I was so happy to have found his grave that I was not concerned about what the headstone did or did not say. As far as I know, I was the only member of his family, extended or otherwise, to have visited his grave. I felt tremendous satisfaction standing there, satisfaction in ending a quest that was, for me, 30 years in the making, and for John a full 140 years. I felt the satisfaction of connecting with my family in general and John in particular; I felt the satisfaction of a soldier connecting with another soldier who had made the ultimate sacrifice. And I also felt satisfaction at making a personal connection to one of the defining periods and events in our nation’s history. The Civil War was now more real to me than ever before: it had moved from my head to my gut, from my mind to my heart. Afterthought My interest in the genealogical world has grown over the years that this search for John was conducted. My database of ancestors and offspring has grown to just short of 8000 names. My list of research contacts, many of whom I now count as family, and even more I now number as friends, has also grown, to my great joy. And at the heart of it all, at its center, is this one quest…is my great-granduncle… John Summers. Peter Summers is a graduate of West Point (Class of 1967) and after more than 20 years in the Service, is currently teaching at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He also teaches many genealogy- and computer-related classes, and was recently honored by being elected the president of the Pinellas Genealogy Society of Pinellas County, Florida. He has been working on his genealogy since 1972. Ja n ua ry/Fe b r u a r y 2009 Ev e r t o n’s Ge n e a l o g i c a l He l p e r © 55
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