New Post at Family Tree

My latest post if up over at Family Tree Firsts.  Bring a box of Kleenex if you are a crier.

I have read this file twice now, and will probably go through it one more time.  Every time I read through a page something new jumps out at me.  I am sure that I will never truly know all the secrets that lie within its pages.  By the way, I have nicknamed this ancestor Harry/Henry.  That way I, and everyone else, will know who I am talking about.

The image shown here is the reason I stood up in the archives and squealed.  It is an enlarged paper copy, taken in 1919, of the tin type that Harry/Henry sent to the government with his pension request.  That rare find of a picture in a NARA file! 

The name of the Mississippi River boat, Adelia,  intrigued me and I wondered if I could find anything else out about it.  A Google search lead me to a book that had an appendix that listed all the steamboats from 1823-1863.  First name in it was the Adelia.  (Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot From 1854-1863.  by George Byron Merrick U of Minnesota Press, Sep 4, 2001 ).  From it I learned the ship was built at California, Pennsylvania in 1853, had a stern wheel, and weighed 127 tons.  In fact, the Google search turned up quite a few accounts of large on board parties, goods carried, and even a couple law-suits that happened well after the time Harry/Henry stopped working on the boat.

I will be posting more soon about what happened to him during and after the Civil War.  Keep your eyes out for it.