A Veteran's Day Story
Veteran's Day is a time to reflect on the sacrifices that so many men and women have made in the defense of our country. Recently someone, because they know of my interest in the Civil War, sent me a remarkable story about one Union soldier who died in the Battle of Gettysburg. The story is entiltled Whose Father Was He? and appeared in the New York Times. It is actually two stories: the first part is the story of a soldier who was killed but had no identification on him save for a photograph of three children that he died clutching to his chest. The story of his identification is an intriguing one that is very Dickensian especially in the section on the doctor who helped in identifying the soldier and who started a home for the fatherless children of soldiers with very tragic results. The second story is the modern attempt of one dogged writer to give substance to the soldier's life before the Civil War. That writer used many of the tools of family history research to unearth facts about his life. One of my favorite parts was his ability to take advantage of a librarian's expertise to find out about the soldier's work as a whaler in the 1850s. He was able to contact a librarian at the Providence Public Library who was able to tell him that the man in question sailed out of New Bedford on the ship Harrison in 1850 and also that the library had the logbook of the voyage! Librarians usually play a pivotal role in these searches.