My search for my family’s Civil War story began more than twenty years ago with the gift of an eighty-year-old sheet of paper, a treasure map of sorts, from my maternal grandmother, Nonna. The fragile document had been passed down through our family for years, eventually ending up in hibernation in a box of family photographs in my grandmother’s closet. Nonna carefully removed the folded sheet from its manila envelope and had the time-yellowed foolscap framed as a gift for my fourteenth birthday.
Eighty years earlier, in 1918, Nonna’s great aunt, Rebecca Edwards Earle, applied to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization whose sole requirement for membership is proof of lineal descent from a veteran of the forces of the Confederate States of America. Rebecca’s father, Lemuel, had died two years earlier in November of 1916, but in his youth more than half a century earlier, he served as a private with the Georgia militia for the last eight months of the Civil War. On her application form, written in a neat, cursive script, Rebecca gave an account of her father’s wartime service:
“I am the daughter of Lemuel J Edwards, who belonged to Company C – Cook’s Battalion, Mell’s Regiment, and he was discharged one week after surrender at Raleigh, N. Car. …
At the time of surrender, he was on a long march, detailed to transfer “Yankee” prisoners and did not know of surrender until he reached Raleigh, N.C. Entered the service day before he was 16yrs old and participated in three battles.”
For years I’ve researched the details behind Rebecca’s tantalizingly brief summary of her father’s wartime service. This blog will detail the ongoing search for my family’s true Civil War story.
Hello Kelly. I’m very interested to see what you found out. Ill be following. Thanks for telling your story.