God bless all the people who work so hard to index all the wonderful material at ancestry.com.
That being said, they are not perfect.
I think even they would agree with that.
Case in point, I was searching for the service record of my great-uncle Henry Walker Brown, who was killed in action at the First Battle of Kernstown during the War Between the States.
Unfortunately, his name didn't pop up in any of the index searches I tried.
I did however get an odd hit for a man named Brown who was killed in the battle. But, the indexer had assigned him four initials preceding that very common surname: "O.S.M.W. Brown."
Even General Beauregard limited himself to just three initials!
Anyway, past experience encouraged me to click on the link that would allow me to view the original image.
Lo and behold, I stumbled across the image included with this post, a handwritten account of all the soldiers who had been killed or wounded in the battle.
The indexer got the first two initials correct after all, but they were not abbreviations for given names. Rather, they represented the dead soldier's rank: Orderly Sergeant.
Oh, and the letter recorded as an "M" is clearly an "H."
Needless to say, I'm thrilled to find this great document related to my family's involvement in our nation's greatest conflict.
But, I wouldn't have found it if I had simply trusted the index.
No comments:
Post a Comment