Adventures in ancestor-huntung

Last Fall I was bitten by the genealogy bug.  Despite making it through four-and-a-half decades without being very curious about my forebears, suddenly it was imperative that I find out more about them.   I blame it on PBS, with all the genealogy-themed shows they ran last summer.  Anyway, I decided I'd try to trace my great-grandfather, the Civil War veteran.   (I only knew that much about him because we used to have one of those fancy discharge papers framed and hanging in our living room.)   I was already interested in the Civil War, thanks to Ken Burns and a politically-incorrect "crush" on Robert E Lee in my early teens.  

I have no sympathy with the goals of the Confederacy.  I just think REL was a good man who made some truly bad decisions.   (I should talk!)  As a Yankee gal supposedly said while watching him ride past her home, "I wish he were ours."

Anyway, I hopped onto the old information superhighway and located Great-Grandpa's tombstone, which listed his regiment.  Turns out he was part of the special militia called up in Pennsylvania when Lee invaded in 1863.  I guess the idea was for a last-ditch defense of Harrisburg or Philly in case the Rebels got past the Union army.  But I knew from my reading that the Rebs had a very low opinion of Yankee militia.  In fact, I gathered that part of the reason a battle was even fought at Gettysburg was that certain Rebel officers assumed the horsemen they encountered were "just militia" to be swatted away like flies.

Of course those horsemen were part of the REAL army, and the rest is history.   The militia never had to see battle.   They didn't know that when they signed up, and their personal bravery may have been unfairly maligned by the Confederates, but in my book they don't really qualify as veterans.   So it was a little deflating for me to find out what my great-granddaddy did in the war.  He would have been just a kid, anyway.   Not that lots of "kids" didn't fight and die in the war, but my family dodged that particular bullet.   It's more about that feeling of pride in knowing your ancestor played a part in the Civil War.  Which he did, of course--just not quite the part I thought he had!