North and South. Union and Confederate. Slavery and free. I knew about these as concepts.
I didn’t know much about the Civil War when it came to the details involved. Sure I knew about the individuals – Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee, etc.; and some of the battles. But when it came to regiments, brigades and other units with state names and ordinal designations, I was in the dark.
And to discover how E. T. fit into all this, I would need to educate myself. But where to begin?
I thought I had something when I found an old newspaper clipping in one of my grandfather’s volumes. It was from a Salem MA newspaper, I think from the 1960s. The writer of the article was describing a picture with something to do about the first casualty from Salem in the Civil War. It gave his name as George A Thompson of Company H. And he died in the first Battle of Bull Run. It stated further that our mutual ancestor (Herbert is a distant cousin of mine) served with George and was a prisoner of war.
When I was first looking at this it was 1996 or 1997, so there wasn’t a whole lot of stuff on the Internet. I had dial up at home, but no graphic interface (I went to the library for that).
So, it appeared that ET was in Company H and a POW.
Where to from here?
Stay tuned.
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