Exploring Civil War records

 

                                                                        Muster rolls for Alexander Mathison

Extracting the information from Alexander Mathison's letters has given me a better idea of the man's history and it has also suggested many more avenues of research. As Alex himself was not my direct ancestor, being the brother of my 2 x great grandmother, I haven't done much research on him. His story is so interesting that I will be looking further. That will be helped by the details I've found in his letters.

Those missives have contained helpful clues like information about his family with the places they lived and how long they stayed. I've now moved on to Civil War records. According to the muster rolls, Alexander Mathison joined the Union Army on May 24, 1861 in Freeport, Illinois for a period of three years. Of course the war lasted longer than that, which was reflected in those same muster rolls. He reenlisted on February 25, 1864 in Hebron, Mississippi. That's when the records change.

At that point, Alex was no longer able to muster in as he had become a prisoner of war and what happened to him was not clear. Later pension forms record that he was injured and disabled. I can't imagine that being an injured POW was good.

While going through the records, many areas of research have suggested themselves, like whether the intermittent special musters relate to particular battles. A closer study of the information I've extracted will, no doubt, point to even more promising avenues to explore. I've just begun to get into the documents in his pension file, so more on that next time.

Sources:

The National Archives, Soldiers Certificate No. 74172, Veteran: Alexander Mathison Rank: Private Service: Co. “B” 15 Ill. Inf Can No.: 1185 Bundle No.: 30

Correcting the story

 

                            A view of the churchyard of Leith United Church with the sign about the artist, Tom Thomson

Sometimes it pays to reread your sources. I didn't extract much information from Alexander Mathison's letter of September 18, 1917. It was the tenth letter in the collection. Maybe I was getting tired at that point or maybe I hadn't realized the significance of the date. The information extracted was as follows: 

                Letcher South Dak Sept 18 1917

• Got home yesterday morning at 10
• Information about his visit and his home community                          

It wasn't until I looked up the date of his nephew, Tom Thomson's death, that I realized this was the first letter in the collection which captured the time after Tom's demise. A reread of the letter opened it to a different interpretation.

Around this time, Alex started writing about his long visits to the State Soldiers Home in Hot Springs, South Dakota and when I looked at my notes later, that was in my mind. When he wrote about getting home to Letcher, I though that meant he had returned from the soldiers' home. But then I read further into the letter which was addressed to Dear Brother and Sisters, in other words, John Thomson, his wife Margaret and Margaret's sister, Henrietta. Further down in the letter he wrote: "It was much harder for me to leave you this time than it was any time before. I hope to see you again." Those sentiments seemed more in the line of something he had written to his relatives when he had recently visited them after their bereavement.

Given the timing of the letters he wrote before after his nephew's death, it was possible that Alex was there for the internment of his nephew's casket at the United Church in Leith, Ontario as Tom Thomson was laid to rest on July 21, 1917. This was his second burial and there was and is some controversy over whether the artist's body was truly in the casket. Even if Alex wasn't visiting at the time of the reinternment, I am sure there would have been a visit to the grave at some point in his visit. That grave was also the resting place of Kenneth Matheson, the father of Alex and his sisters, Margaret and Henrietta.

It's taking me a while, but I'm slowly piecing together a timeline for Alexander Mathison. He lived through a lot in his life so it seems it would be interesting to write about him in more detail. The task right now though, is to make sure I'm extracting the right information from his letters to come to the correct conclusions about the events of his life. 

Sources:

Little, John. Who Killed Tom Thomson? The Truth about the Murder of One of the 20^th Century’s Most Famous Artists. Skyhorse Publishing, New York 2018.

Reading between the lines

 

As I work my way towards the last of Alexander Mathison's letters, it feels much like reading a suspense novel. When the dates of the letters flirted with the years around 1917 and 1918, I wondered what Alex would write about the news of the death of one of Margaret and John Thomson's sons, Tom. Surely they must have told him about this unexpected death.

But did they? Tom's disappearance in early July of 1917 and the discovery of his body on July 16 of that year* are known facts as the mystery of Tom Thomson's death has been widely written about. A scan of the information extracted from Alex' letters in 1917 and 1918 revealed no mention of the loss of his nephew, Tom.

I was intrigued. Were the Thomson's keeping Alex in the dark? Perhaps they didn't want to send him information about his nephew in a letter. Maybe Alex had never met Tom or the family didn't like to talk about that particular son. There is no mention in any of the letters I have read so far about this one of Alex' nephews, although George and Henry's names do appears as nephews Alex corresponded with. Could it be that Alex and Tom did not get along or just that Tom was not a letter writer?

Piecing together the story with only one half of the correspondence results in a lot of speculation. It also looks like I need to bring in other resources to make sense of the letters I am reading.

Sources:

*Little, John. Who Killed Tom Thomson? The Truth about the Murder of One of the 20^th Century’s Most Famous Artists. Skyhorse Publishing, New York 2018.

From letters to research

 

It was a surprise when Alexander Matheson's letters jumped from 1896 to 1916. It signaled a change from the initial correspondence in which he took delight in exchanging news with the relatives he had lost for so long. In the later letter, he wrote about the 20 years they had been in touch and mentions that he visited them three times. I hope for his sake that travel from Letcher, South Dakota to Owen Sound, Ontario had become easier during that time. In the letter leading up to his first visit, he wrote that his route would go through Chicago and take him 2 or 3 days. That first visit happened in January. Not a great time of year for travel in Ontario but, at least the first time he made the journey, Alexander was a farmer so the winter was when he had the time to visit.

I'm still extracting the information from his letters but what I've read so far has deepened my curiosity about Alexander Matheson and the times in which he lived. He was a man who travelled far and lived through interesting historical times. There are places, events and people mentioned in his letters that I want to know more about. I also want to get a better feel for the background; the history of the places he lived in and wrote about and the family connections he mentions, so I need a plan.

While I continue the extraction process, I need to pinpoint items in his letters that need further research. Not only will this be research to find further information about places and events but it will also require delving into the family tree to find out where the people he has mentioned fit in. Perhaps some of them are part of that group that genealogical researchers advise that we look into, the FAN Club, (family, associates and neighbours), but others may actually fit into the Mathison family tree. It looks like this is going to be a multifaceted project.  

Delving deeper into letters from the past

 

The extraction of information from Alexander Matheson's letters is going slowly. When I wrote about pulling them out of their dusty confines I wasn't sure how many letters there were. I imagined a few missives written to his sister after they first made contact after 40 years. The few were actually nineteen. That means there's a lot of information to extract.

His sister, Margaret was not his only correspondent. He also wrote to her husband, John Thomson. Alexander also indicated that he wrote to some of Margaret and John's sons, but those letters have not survived. As the sons were out of their parents' home at that point, it's no surprise they didn't preserve the correspondence from their long lost uncle. The girls, Margaret and John's daughters, also exchanged letters with him.

As with all the other correspondence only Alexander's letters were preserved. But those to the girls of the family are frustrating. He addresses them to "My Dear Niece". That would be fine if he only had one niece but that was not the case. Margaret and John Thomson had 10 children, 4 girls and 6 boys,* so was he addressing Elizabeth, Louisa, Minnie or Margaret, also known as Peggie, when he wrote the letters to his dear niece? They were also not the only nieces attached to the Thomson household. Charlotte or Lottie Tripp had also lived with the Thomsons for a time. She was also his niece, the daughter of his deceased sister, Kate.

By the time Alexander Matheson got in touch with his family in Canada again, a lot had happened in all of their lives including births and deaths. Helpfully, Alexander reacted by citing some of the details of what he had been told while answering his relative's queries which helps in piecing together the story. I'm about halfway through the correspondence, extracting details as I go. I know there will be plenty of research to spin off from the information covered and I am looking forward to finding out more about the Thomsons and Mathesons and Alexander's life. 

Sources:

*Littlefield, Angie Tom Thomson’s Fine Kettle of Friends: biography, history, art and food. Angielittlefield.com/books.html p11

Rediscovering genealogical treasure

 

                                                   Letter from Alexander Matheson to his sister Margaret Thomson 

It was a story that captured my attention. A young man going off to seek his fortune after his family was devastated by the loss of one of their members, the wife and mother. Setting off to seek his place in the world was a time honoured rite of passage; coming back to find the family gone not how the scenario normally played out.

But how do I know what the young man, Alexander Mathison, did after that? It's in the copies of his letters which I have. Letters which he wrote to his sister Margaret when they finally connected again in 1895 after 40 years. They had a lot of catching up to do.

I pulled the letters out to see if there was anything written about my great grandmother, Lottie Tripp, as she was part of this Mathison clan. Her name appeared but so did those of other people. Margaret must have asked Alexander about what he remember of their family background hoping that as the eldest child he knew more. There are names to follow up on and explanations of family connections which require careful interpretation.

I've only skimmed the first letter so far. There are others. It makes me wonder what other nuggets of information I will find. It also reminds me that I have spent years amassing documents about my ancestors. I'm good at the finding part, not so good at the filing part and, obviously, not that great with the analysis and planning for next steps part. I need to remedy that because, as I look through my amassed information for stories to tell, there is sure to be more untapped genealogical treasure. 

2021 in Review

 

2021 is another year heading for the record books, unfortunately more due to disasters than for anything positive. Fingers crossed that 2022 will be a year that we can get back to something approaching "normal". In the meantime, here is a review of the topics covered in my blog posts in 2021.

As the year began, I was writing the story of my maternal grandfather, HS Chambers. My first blog posts for the year were inspired by the creative nonfiction work that I was writing about his immigration story and also by the research I had done on his family line which took me back to Northampton. I was able to visit that county in person in the 2000s and carry out research in local archives.

By March I was taking an NGIS course about non-conformist religion in England which led to posts about religion and about the many opportunities for genealogical education.

In May my interest was caught by World War II and how it had affected my family. This led to a plan to read all the books about WWII in my personal library. It turned out to be a bigger task than I thought. I'm still working my way through them.

By August I was thinking about travel, combining a trip to Victoria with looking up a directory entry for a place where my mother had lived at one time and also the place where she had worked. At that point I was also looking ahead to trips planned for 2022.

Towards the end of the year, the topics became more varied, inspired by the weather and books that I read related to genealogy or my family lines. I had also moved on to the planning stage of writing about another ancestor, this time my great grandmother on my maternal line.

As in years past, there were posts about DNA, although I don't seem to have made much headway on genetic genealogy. There is one aspect of genealogy that I have found of particular interest. That's epigenetics, which is basically the turning off or on of gene expression. I hope to explore more about this in the coming year and see if I can find out how it may have affected some of my ancestors.

Images:

Pier 21 in Halifax

Yelvertoft First Congregational Church

180 Shooters Hill Road, a tobacconist’s shop like it was when my grandfather had his shop in that location around the time of WWII

The Hudson’s Bay store in Victoria where I believe my mother used to work

Silhouette of my great grandmother

Books about epigenetics