So you may wonder why the title of this post is “Irony”, well let me explain. So I have already expressed my general distaste for this project (mostly because I find pretty much anything Civil War related to be mind-numbingly dull, even if you try to stick zombies in it, I will probably be pretty bored) but in addition to that and my dislike of looking at old documents, I just learned that my soldier died in the town of Marion, Indiana. The small town I grew up in (in Southwest Virginia, mind you) was named Marion and the place where my mothers family is from is a small city in Indiana not far from where my soldier died. I hate both of these places with a fiery passion, so I just found it amusing that I have to lurk in the records of a place that I rather loathe. Joy.

Moving on.

So just to add insult to injury, there is pretty much just a four year window after the muster rolls end and his death date (1890-1894). So there is not much to work with, everything is going to be what is happening in that small span, in this small town, which as of the moment I am not finding much on. I am continuing to look obviously, but

Aha! As I type this I actually found something, its not much (it’s a wikipedia article) but it gives me an idea of what to look for in other places. So that’s nice.

Another problem I’m running into, while I have found a site (in.gov) that has all these lovely newspapers and birth/marriage/death certificates, not a one of them has been digitized. Which is utterly useless to me, as I can’t just lope out to Indiana and hang out in their microfilm room to look up the information.

Hopefully I will have more luck soon.