Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It’s Saturday Night Again – 

Time For Some More Genealogy Fun!!

Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision. 

1)  What newspaper article is the “best” one you’ve found to help you with your family history?  Tell us about it – where you found it, and what you learned from it.

2) Tell us about your “best” newspaper article find  in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

I’m a little late about posting today. I spent yesterday with my husband’s family as we celebratedthe marriage of his nephew, Nathan, to Cami.

Late in the afternoon, I glanced at Randy Seaver’s blog to see what the prompt was. When I first read the prompt, I panicked. I have used a lot of newspaper articles in my research. I thought that identifying one would be impossible. Then sometime during the dance, I remembered a previous post highlighting an article about my second great grandfather, Washington Marion Crawford.

In the article, Washington Crawford (or Marion Crawford as he was known in Indiana) shares a poem he wrote about his time as a prisoner of war in Andersonville prison.

My Capture and Imprisonment

Kilpatrick is a jolly soldier,
and I’m of his command,
and by a defeat of his,
I was left with a rebel band.

In the month of September,
In the year sixty-three,
The army was laying idle,
And Kil that couldn’t see.

So he being thus uneasy,
And anxious for a fight,
Requested General Meade,
To let him do his might.

His request being granted,
His command was called together,
On twenty-first of September,
In cold unpleasant weather.

We marched that day to Madison,
And found the rebs hard by,
I’m sure you’d laugh If you could see,
The way we mad them fly.

We lay that night on our arms,
And arose at early morn,
Made a breakfast on hard-tack,
and roasted rebel corn.

At nine o’clock we started,
General Buford on the pike,
Kil goes round to the right,
With intent the rear to strike.

We came around in evening,
And crossed the Rapidan,
Met the rebel column,
And fought them five to one.

General Stewart seemed quite uneasy,
But did the thing up well,
He turned around a battery,
And threw in shot and shell.

Then Kil deployed his skirmishers,
And went in for support,
But before it could reach us,
We had a reb escort.

We were then marched to Orange,
And lay there under guard,
On the cold and frozen ground,
In the Court House yard.

Next day we went to Richmond,
Expecting moderate times,
In a few days, or weeks at most,
To be sent to the Yankee lines.

We lay that night in Libby,
And half way took our case,
Being bitten by Confederate lice,
Which are far worse than fleas.

Next morning bright bright and early,
They ordered us in ranks,
Searched us and took our money,
Without returning thanks.

We went next to belle-Isle,
Where in the sand we lay,
The whole winter through,
Wearing life away.

We left there in the Spring,
For a more sunny clime,
To a prison post in Georgia,
Where I composed my rhyme.

This prison post of theirs,
I a large stockade pen,
Built for keeping prisoners,
and used for starving men.

We left there in the fall,
In the year eighteen sixty-four,
And praying to the God above us,
To see our friends once more.

But now alas
To our sad fate,
We were taken down to Charleston,
To a little longer wait.

Our treatment here
We thought was good
We ate corn meal and beef,
And a small stick of wood.

We next went to Florence.
In South Carolina State,
My heart sunk within me,
When I entered the prison gate.

For two months here we staid,
And whiled the hours away,
By cooking a pint of meal
On each successive day.

On the eighth day of December,
The glorious news did come,
That we could leave this wretched place,
To go to a Northern home.

And now I bless the day
That gave me my release,
And pray to God the time is near,
When we will have a happy peace.

Marion Crawford

I tried to print a list of my newspaper sources but could not figure out how to just get a list of source names. Below is a screen shot showing some of my newspaper related sources.

When I tried to print a list of sources, it generated a 576 page report. Instead of trying to edit that report to get just the newspapers, I took a screenshot of a page showing some of those newspaper sources.