Burns thought all records disappeared after his great-great-grandfather was released. that he was a blacksmith in life and had been 'forced' to join the Confederate Army, which I don't think is quite accurate."īurns said he traced his ancestor's capture in the newly created state of West Virginia in 1863 and how Abraham Burns was sent to a prison camp until the war ended. "He was 5-feet, 4 inches tall and had gray eyes, which I suppose is perfect for a Confederate," Burns said of the details he gleaned from the documents. "It's become much faster, easier and cheaper to actually do a lot of this research."Īt the Archives, filmmaker Ken Burns revealed a family discovery he made from the Archives records shortly after his 1980s PBS series, "The Civil War." He learned that his great-great-grandfather Abraham Burns was a Confederate soldier, which he called a "stunning discovery." ![]() ![]() "Family history, I can tell you as someone who's been doing this for 15 years now, used to be a hell of a lot harder than it is today," Hanna said. The company sponsors the NBC show and invested $100 million in digitizing historical records. Tracing genealogy is becoming a fast-growing hobby and even "fashionable" with a Friday night TV show devoted to celebrity family histories, said Josh Hanna, executive vice president of. Many may not know about their family ties. ![]() The pages contain about 3 million names of those who enlisted for a draft from 1863 to 1865, though only about 40,000 were drafted to fight.Īrchivists estimate 17 million Americans have an ancestor who fought in the war. Nearly 275,000 newly published pages are among the most heavily used documents for research in the National Archives' Civil War holdings, curators said. WASHINGTON (AP) -The National Archives and published newly digitized Civil War records online for the first time Wednesday, allowing users to trace family links to the war between North and South.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |