Great news! I've been blogrolled again!
So I've taken the liberty of adding a reciprocal link to Andy's Civil War Blog aka Strike The Tent ..... Andy's blog is dedicated to his great great grandfather, who fought with the 5th New York Cavalry and died at Andersonville Prison during the Civil War. The blog is regularly updated with news about Civil War history, battlefields, monuments, museums, archives, reenactments, documentaries and history books. His blog is all Civil War all the time, so I feel honored and privileged to be included on his blogroll.
I haven't updated in quite some time, more than a month, in part because I've been traveling lately. I went to the U.S. for a week or two and I brought back some forms I had ordered that should allow me to obtain copies of my great great grandfather's military service records and of his widow's pension application which should be on file at the National Archives in Washington D.C.. I'll get the forms sent off and should have a reply of some sort within the next few months.
I also brought back two family trees that my grandmother gave to my mother some time ago. I found them while poring over some old photo albums. The trees are blank except for three or four strategically placed penciled in notes, clues, if you will, that only make sense to someone like me who has filled in some of the blanks around them. I now have part or all of more than thirty names from my mother's line, extending back three, four and sometimes even five generations. My mother died seven years ago and my grandmother more than fifteen years ago, so it's almost like getting a postcard from the Great Beyond.