George Johnson survived the Civil War—but just barely. Enlisting in the Sixth Wisconsin in the summer of 1861 and rising to the rank of first lieutenant, he served through the end of the war despite being twice wounded. George returned to his hometown of Shawano, perhaps planning to resume his pre-war occupation as a lumberman in central Wisconsin. However, with his health irreparably compromised by wounds, he died in November 1866.
Johnson left neither a family nor a will, and only a meager handful of possessions. Among them were a few household items, clothing, a little cash, and a government bond worth $200 (perhaps bought with the bounty he received when he re-enlisted in 1864). But there were also several objects related to his military service: a suitable-for-framing “memorial” commemorating his service; $27 of Confederate money; a pocket looking glass; two volumes of infantry tactics; one corps badge; and two lieutenant’s epaulets. There were a few other things: perhaps he had carried the satchel and a trunk through the war; perhaps the package of envelopes featured the patriotic slogans and images popular during the war; perhaps the black hat was the one he received with the new uniform in which he—as part of the “black hat” Iron Brigade—had marched in the Grand Review eighteen months earlier.
In any event, his former comrade and executor, Julius Murray, auctioned off Johnson’s belongings. Aside from the government bond, Johnson’s estate brought in a total of $28.86. The epaulets and soldiers’ memorial each earned a nickel, while the corps badge and infantry tactics went for $.25 each. The proceeds didn’t begin to cover the cost of Johnson’s funeral and burial, which cost $47. Murray paid to have a picket fence erected around the grave.
This affecting story plays a small but evocative role in my chapter on the “life cycle of memory” in The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment. And the only reason I was able to include it was that the probate records for Johnson’s estate popped up in a search for the young Wisconsinite on Ancestry.com. I would never have found the story of Johnson’s sad end if I had not checked Ancestry.
Indeed, the lieutenant is just one of nearly 2000 members of the Sixth Wisconsin who appear on a spreadsheet with more than two dozen datapoints that provides one of the book’s vital threads. Although data from a number of primary sources—newspapers, pension files, and so forth—contributed, much of the evidence embedded in the spreadsheet came out of the sometimes tedious but always compelling search results for each of the men who served in the regiment. The sheer volume of available records that would otherwise take years to consult make a patient and shrewd use of Ancestry a powerful complement to other sources more traditionally used by historians of the Civil War.
