We just
got back from a wonderful trip to the Charlottesville, Virginia, area to see
family and join a tour of three Civil War Battlefields. This tour was arranged
by some of my husband's college classmates. We had 110 participants and it was
narrated and guided by a wonderful man, Dr. James McPherson. He is a former
Professor at Princeton University and a Pulitzer prize-winning author and an
expert on the Civil War. This man could answer ANY question about the Civil War
you could ask. We visited Petersburg, Manassas and the Appomattox Courthouse
and heard about the battles and loss of life.
A real treat
though, was the tour and dinner at Montpelier one evening. This was James
Madison's home. We had a docent from Montpelier tell us how James Madison
secured himself away in his library at the home for several months and read
everything he could from other countries about how they set up their
governments (he was proficient in several languages). This was the beginning of
the "Virginia Plan" which eventually turned into the U.S.
Constitution. It really brought home how much went into this process and how
important the Constitution is to this country. Please refer to this website for
more detail:
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/madison/aa_madison_father_1.html
One of
the reasons I was excited about this trip is that my paternal great-great
grandfather, William W. Court served in the Civil War. I have written about the
Court family in prior blog posts. And I wrote an article about the Court family
of New York, in a publication called the Desert
Tracker, from the West Valley Genealogical Society in Sun City, Arizona, which
I refer to on my website (www.relativesintheattic.com).
William Court (1842-1925), enlisted in the 147th
Infantry Volunteers, 1st Corp., Wadsworth's Division, Co. K, on September 23,
1862, from Oswego, New York. He served until the end of the war and was
discharged on July 15, 1865, in Washington, DC. He was made Sgt. at some point,
and 1st Sgt. on January 1, 1865. But, he must have done something to make
someone unhappy because he became just a Sgt. again on May 1, 1865. He saw
battles in Chancellorsville (although some sources say the Regiment didn't actually
fight in that one), Gettysburg and Rappahannock. His Co. was assigned to the 5th Army Corps
starting in March of 1864 and was at the Siege of Petersburg, VA. There,
according to his pension records I received from the National Archives and
Records Administration (NARA) in DC, he caught a terrible cold while on picket
duty somewhere after the Hatcher's Run battle in early March, 1865. He suffered
from Rheumatism after that, the effects which stayed with him the rest of his
life. Initially, he was in a hospital in City Point, VA, before being
transferred to Campbell Hospital in Washington, DC, in April of 1865. He was discharged from the service in July of
that year. Therefore, he did not make it to Appomattox where
Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant. It is amazing that he survived three years of fighting in the
Civil War. We lost (the country) about 750,000 of OUR people during this
war. Sad, indeed.
So, we
walked in areas in Petersburg where he did serve. I was able to follow his footsteps
closely because of a book I have
digitally, by Thomas J. Ebert, Librarian Emeritus, California State University,
Fresno, entitled: "147th New York Volunteer Infantry, September 22,
1862-June 7, 1865, The Oswego Regiment: A Documentary History." It is a detailed accounting of this Regiment
during the war.
The
Beckington-McDougall family has at least five other soldiers who fought during
the Civil War. Bruce's family has at least one that I have found so far - I am
sure there are more. I will write about these soldiers in future posts.
