A little family history

As a historian and a Civil War reencactor, I am particularly fond of a few items of family Civil War memorabilia that I own.  One is the bayonet that is supposedly a souvenir my great-great grandfather picked up from his Civil War days.  He was cavalry, so I am not sure what he would have wanted with an infantry rifle bayonet, but I have it, and would dearly love to unravel that mystery.

I also own his discharge papers, and some correspondence regarding his old-age pension.  All in all, I would guess I have about half a dozen pieces of John's service-related paperwork.

Another Civil War-era relic from that same grandsire is this:  

It's his presentation discharge from the army.  It details John's enlistment information (Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry, the battles he fought (quite a few, including one of the bloodiest cav battles of the war), and the terms and conditions of his discharge (honorable due to the end of the war).  As you can see, it has a lot of very colorful and detailed bits of artwork around the borders:

And at the very bottom of the whole thing is the dedication.  The wording is pretty plain:  "To the memory of his beloved wife Rebecca" - poor John, he was a widower by the time this fancy thing was made up.  But no, Rebecca was alive and well.  And there is the first bit of the real mystery.  Why would John dedicate this to the memory of his wife if she was still alive?

Which leads me to an interesting family story, and a hypothesis or two on my part.  You see, after the war, John returned home, married Rebecca, they had a son, and he settled down to working at a mill in the next county over.  John and Rebecca lived in town and John had a habit of walking home to work for lunch each day, then returning to the mill to finish his shift.  One day John didn't come back from lunch, and after work his buddies showed up to check on his health.

Imagine their surprise when Rebecca informed them that John had left to "find his fortune".  Imagine Rebecca's! 

Seven years later finds Rebecca filing for a common-law divorce citing John's abandonment as the reason.  Turns out John made it all the way to his parent's house where he lived to the end of his days, a white-bearded old man who wrote poetry in his spare time.

Rebecca eventually remarried and her second husband raised John's son.  John also had some part in his son, William's life, and there are photographs of them, along with William's son and grandson (my grandpa and uncle).

Obviously John knew good and well that Rebecca was alive and well when he received this presentation discharge.  So why in the world did he dedicate it to her memory?

Could be he was dedicating it to his memory of her from back in the day when they were married.  Could be that since she remarried she was "dead" to him.  And my family is always good for the grand gesture.  And martyrdom is something we do particularly well.    Alas, there are no family records to tell us what in the world was going through his head when he chose that dedication.

It is these objects - the bayonet, the various pieces of correspondence, and the presentation discharge - that I would like to have appraised some day.  Not in order to sell them, but to know their value for insurance purposes and to be able to impress on future generations of my family their value and importance.

Now if only I had some items belonging to John and Rebecca's son, William.  He had a interesting end to his life.....the police report says he committed suicide by straight razor.  But his wife (a second one) spent the end of her life in the state insane asylum.  I'll have to tell that story some other day.


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