Civil War Sunday - The Descendents

Today, a major genealogy website, ancestry.com, is offering free searches of various databases for its non-paying members.

I decided to take the opportunity to do a little research on my mother's side of the family, one that I don't have that much knowledge of.  I am more fortunate with my father's side, as an uncle did extensive research years ago.  I quickly found I needed skills I did not have enough time to learn, but spent an interesting hour or more stumbling around the site.

Then, I decided to satisfy some curiosity today - do major figures of the Civil War have living direct descendents? Years ago, I had met a man who had claimed George Armstrong Custer (although best known for his death in the famous Battle of Little Big Horn,  he was also a Civil War general) as one of his ancestors. What other people related to the Civil War had descendents, and what had those descendents accomplished?

What I found would take me many days to read about.

Many people who know they are descended from historical figures in the Civil War are proud of that fact, but many also have the philosophy of "don't depend on your ancestry".

It turns out there are a number of famous Civil War related figures who have living descendents- Confederates and Federal figures, abolitionists, and slaves.

Reading through their stories is fascinating, and there are thousand of more stories waiting for the reading - civilians, soldiers and others who lived through the war.  It is estimated that one in 17 people in the United States have an ancestor who fought in the Civil War.

The story of Kenneth Morris, Jr, in particular, inspires me.  A descendent of both Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, he fights to abolish modern day slavery- just as his great-great-great grandfather, Frederick Douglass, fought to abolish slavery in our country.

Then there is Ulysses S. Grant's great-great grandson, a native of Syracuse (a city about an hour from where I live) who is a museum curator and art expert.

There is Bertram Hayes-Davis, who preserves the memory of his ancestor Jefferson Davis, best known as the President of the Confederate States of America. 

Confederate General Stonewall Jackson (who has a number of ties with New York State) has living descendents although he did not survive the war- his granddaughter, who passed away in 1991, was 104.

Meanwhile, Dennis Chamberlain, a direct descendent of Union General and Battle of Gettysburg hero Joshua Chamberlain, is the latest of a long line of Chamberlains to service in the military.

The Lee family of Virginia also has had a distinguished history, although many of them were not direct ancestors or descendents of the famous Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

There is one missing name, though, from people alive today.  Abraham Lincoln.  The man who was President of the United States during the Civil War, has no direct descendents alive today.  This is his genealogy.

Do you have a famous person or historical figure in your family tree?

Civil War Sunday - The Mystery of George Armstrong Custer's Son

Did I know a descendent of General George Armstrong Custer, a Civil War general before he went on to fame (and death) fighting Native Americans and dying at Little Big Horn? (I know, technically this happened after the Civil War, but Custer did fight in that war, and achieved the rank of Major General.)

I am reading a wonderful book on Custer, written by Larry McMurtry (who also wrote the Lonesome Dove series and The Last Picture Show, among many other books).  So far I love the book because it has a lot of historical pictures and drawings.  I am a visual learner, and having pictures in a book greatly enhances my experience.

I knew that, officially, George Custer had no children (from his marriage to his wife, Libbie, who was only 35 when she was widowed.)  But, as McMurtry's book discusses, it is possible Custer may have had a child with a Cheyenne captive in his custody. The boy, Yellow Swallow, has been lost to history according to McMurtry, but I have also read about oral legend that the boy, with other Cheyenne, ended up in Montana after the battle of Punished Woman Fork in Kansas.

Now fast forward to 1977.

In 1977, when we lived in Wichita, spouse and I befriended a couple.  The man, whose last name was Evans, once claimed to be a descendent of Custer.  (of course this could be bad memory on my part but it stuck because his wife had native American blood, and the irony wasn't lost on me.).  

We met his wife back when my spouse was in the Air Force and we arrived at McConnell Air Force base in Wichita, KS to start a 3 year tour of duty. His wife worked at the base housing office, which is actually how we met.  (it was like an instant "click" with me and her.)  This man was not a braggart by any means.  He was a very talented magician and artist.  I still have two paintings he gave me, too and they have his name on them.

Several months after we met, he got a job in Hannibal, MO with the Boy Scouts, and he and his wife moved.  At this point his wife was very pregnant with their first child.  We had no address for them, they never wrote us, and we have never had any contact since.

I once tried to do an Internet search for him.  Came up empty.  Well, there actually is someone with a little bit of fame with the same name, but it isn't him.  That person is too young.

So, I do not know if my "mystery man", a man I haven't seen since 1977, could possibly have been a descendent of Yellow Swallow.  In the years that I lived in Kansas, I found that a lot of "white people" had varying degrees of Native American blood, and were very proud of their heritage.  For now, I must consider this a mystery.

And wouldn't it be amazing if the person I knew as an unborn baby read this blog and could tell me more about what happened to his parents.  I so hope their lives were (and are) happy.