March 17, 2005

• Whatever the truth of the matter, they all wasted their time.
• It's OK, Cat, the South is about to rise again anyway.
• Fuck you, Korzeniowski the Cat. I've read the letters of my ancestors who fought in that war. Howard Zinn can tell me why they fought and died, but you can't. Glib jerk.
• Whoa there, goofyfoot! Perhaps Cat was simply referring to the senselessness of it all. You know, how the southern states seceded to keep alive the institution of slavery and whatnot. Or am I wasting my time?
• I don't think any of my ansectors had immigrated to America until after the war, except my Indian ones, but they were too stone drunk to particpate, as well as dieing from some other things involving the army.
• My great grandfather (James Cutler Milliman) served in the union army, Iowa Regiment, and strangely enough they don't have him listed.
• Well, goofyfoot, imo, you have no understanding at all of their lives & are simply pinning their stories to your chest as if it somehow belongs to you. You have no concept of those people, never could; none of us can. The events of their lives mean zero, effectively, to your existance. You would still be here whatever the outcome of their little war, unless your dad had pulled out too soon. This nationalistic pride that people have in the activities of some tick-laden ancestor is a delusion. Would you also like to take on board the actions of the murderers & rapists in your genetic history? Thought not.
• KCat, you've got it all wrong. The events of their lives do mean a lot. Not that they fought in a war, but because they're connected to our individual histories and we can get more into the country's history by researching our ancestors' involvement. The details of an individual's life add color to general history. My guess is that you're pretty young. But give it a few years, and you may find that understanding your roots is very satisfying. And, how would we get an understanding of our progenators' lives without knowing what they went through? You're way too dismissive of what is an interest for many of us. And, yes, there a scandals in my family tree, but I love them. There's something very satisfying about connecting to genetic contributors who died two or three hundred years ago, especially if they showed that they were prone to stuff that was good gossip. OOps, I get it, you're trolling. Shouldn't have fed you, I guess, but I prefer to think of this community as sincere.
• It's something to read the letters of the men of my family who fought in that war (my grandmother, who's ninety-nine this year, has them.) Grandma remembers and tells me about her grandma, whose first husband died in the war, and whose second husband came back without an arm. My great-great-grandma had to be mighty strong up there in Illinois during all the war that she didn't make; she managed to feed a household and make a living, and actually prosper. I think the building she lived and worked in still stands, in Port Byron Ill. One ancestor who went to war (as a piper, at sixteen, IIRC), Richard Smith, died afterward of tb in Chicago. Yeah, I know all about my ancestors and their sacrifices.
• great link, Panleth. I can't pass the link due to the form, but I found the two I knew of and one I did not. The war appears to have shattered the lives of my ancestors; when the war started, there was a family group of about fifteen living in one town in Missouri, who'd been there for about two-and-a-half generations, fifty years. After the war, there was only the patriarch and his youngest son. All the others had left or died of disease. My family was ignorant of this until a distant relative did some research and shared. Guess what? My family's tradition of moving far, far away from one another and losing touch appears to be a pattern partially created by the war. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having family behaviors that may be inherited responses to the war.
• Obviously, being a Limey, none of my relatives are involved in this, but I would also like to disagree strongly with the cat. My grandfarther was in WWII, and other relatives served in the forces before him. These things mean a lot to me and my family, and his actions, both during the war and after, continue to influence me to this day. There was a great 'family war stories' thread some time ago, but it may have been lost to the 'crash'. It's a shame the cat wasn't here to read that one. We also have scandals (illegitimate kids and a particulaurly nasty suicide to name but two), but I'm not ashamed of them. In fact it only adds to the deep understanding of their lives I feel I have. In short, and on behalf of my American monkeys, don't try and tell me what is and isn't important about my past. Now go and fiddle with your iPod some more and think about what you've said.
• Nationalistic pride? Way to assume. So happens I'm just curious. I am interested in the stories of people's lives, be that present or past. Is curiousness allowed in your little universe, or is that not ironically detached and cynical enough? Most of my ancestors were still in Europe until the 20th century, but one branch was already here, I believe. The name may have changed since then, but I'll think about looking when I have some more time to kill.
• Bruise- I'm with you. All my stock falls into three categories: Immigrated in the late 1800s, or was indigenous (though their names have been lost to time). Which makes me unwilling to pay reparations...
• I have family war stories out the yin yang and ancestors on both sides of the Civil War, and this database is really cool. Now I need to dig out some first names so I can figure out who is who - including the Wisconsin brothers Atkinson who survived the battle of Shiloh and were sitting under a tree resting when one of them was struck by lightning and killed. My mom's family swears that this is true - and stuff like that would be interesting to me, K the C, whether they were related to me or not. But yes, I like finding out about my ancestors, my kids like it, and the more scandal ridden (and on my father's side I come from one of those old southern gothic faulknerian families, so we got scandals) the better.
• awesome link, panleth. thanks so much. i have a great-great-somethingorother who served and left a huge box of his diaries. he was so popular amongst his peers that they broke apart food crates to make a coffin and give him a "proper" burial, a rarity during the conflict.
• The moment you release yourself of bondage to a pantheon of ancestors, you will be free to define yourself as an individual. Perhaps such a person would be surprised at how much more joy is theirs to experience, and to share. Peace.
• ...once again, with all due respect, Nostril, it is not necessarily bondage/worship. Perhaps. We. Are. Just. Effing. Well. Curious. Nor does curiosity - or, for that matter, a sense of connection to other people - immediately mean that such a person is undefined, not individual, or worthless. Perhaps, and this is going way out on a limb, other people are not exactly the same as you, and have other experiences and personalities. Just a thought. But by all means, continue judging people based on the motives you create in your own head. I've said my piece. Twice. I'm done.
• No Americans in my family tree, but I do have an ancestor who fought and died at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Nice to hear from you again, Nostril
• I apologise for any offense I might have caused, Wurwilf et al. I too am very interested in the achievements of my ancestors. I just feel that the temptation is there to fall into a pattern of aggrandisment (if that is even a word) of these people, without exercising critical viewpoint. From personal experience, I think that it's easy to slip into a kind of misplaced pride which I blame for a lot of troubles between folk. I've even, in my younger days, been drawn into arguments over stuff that my ancestors did, or even brawls. Being from partly Scottish stock, I'm sure you grok how our people hacked each other to bits over stupid old feuds that meant nothing, so I try to remain leery of all that stuff (my clan is still, to this day, enemies of the Kerrs!) I'm certainly not suggesting we forget the achievements of our forebears. rocket88, thankyou, & everyone else too. I hope you are all well.
• Well, that I agree with. Thanks for the clarification, no further ranting. :)
• Would you also like to take on board the actions of the murderers & rapists in your genetic history? Thought not. Yeah, I'll do that too. My Spanish ancestors pillaged all over Guatemala, a fact of history I learned before the Civil War history, perhaps because letters were kept in the US but family history was buried in Guatemala. I'll hear any kind of history from my family. I love it. Even if it's awful, it's where I come from. God, that sounds trite.
• But also true. You ask me, the bastards are usually more interesting to learn about, in a purely dramatic sense. Those are the really meaty stories.
• Meaty - exactly. Here's one: One day a few years ago my grandmother and I were out and she gestured toward a skeleton key we saw in a window display. "That's the kind of key that Nana [family name for her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother] said reminded her of her prison key." Nana had been the wife of a very powerful man in Guatemala, and during a revolution the whole family had been jailed. This prompted Nana to flee with her four sons around he turn of the century. Her husband, my great grandfather Francisco, stayed behind to battle it out and rise again to the top of whatever government would prevail. I think he must have been a ruthless man. One of his brothers was a psoriatic, as I am. He stayed holed up in a room. He might have been thought to have leprosy if he hadn't hidden away. He might have thought he had syphilis. This shit is fascinating to me.
• My mistake. My granddaddy fought with the 46th New York Volunteer Infantry. He moved to Iowa after the war.
• The Famous Cocksucker's Brigade.