Grains of Truth

In 2013 I confirmed an oral legend I had recently learned about my paternal great great grandfather. Up until 2009 my family had never heard about our ancestor John Alexander being in the civil war. I was skeptical even after I found a John Alexander on the roster of U.S. Colored Troops out of Mississippi. After all, John Alexander was a common name. I found dozens of them serving in the war. For that reason, I did not send for the pension papers. It was a lot of money to spend to find out it was the wrong man. I decided to go in person. I justified the expenditure as a trip for business and for fun.

It turned out that the pension papers were for my relatives and it gave me more details about John's life. However, it did not give me the name of his slave holder. That was left blank. I had to deduce who it might be from other evidence. I concluded that the slave holder had been a Huffman. This was also the man my aunt always thought was the slave holder.

Since 2013 I haven't done much more research on John Alexander but I think the ancestors have been nudging me this week. Yesterday I decided to look into John Huffman born in 1801 in Alexandria, Virginia and died in 1882 in Lincoln County, Mississippi.  In 1870, Huffman lived in the same neighborhood as John Alexander. This is one of the clues I have been told to look for when trying to find the slave holder. I looked at Huffman's family tree. Huffman was married to Mary Glass. Her parents were Frederick Mason Glass and Elizabeth Strother. When I saw this I got very excited. You see, according to another oral legend, John Alexander lived on a plantation in Virginia called Strouder. Some of my cousins have told me that "Strawder" was his nickname. Am I on the right trail?

I was still skeptical. Glass and Strother married and lived in Georgia. Georgia was never part of any oral history for Alexander. However,  I was able to find a family tree on ancestry.com for the Glass family. It gave me Mary's ancestry. Her grandfather was William Strouther, born in 1755 and died in 1833 in Virginia. He was living in Fauquier County when he died. Fauquier is adjacent to Rappahannock County, where John Alexander claimed he was born!

I definitely think I'm on the right trail now. It also makes me curious as to whether all the oral legends I have heard have a grain of truth. My to-do list has just gotten longer.

John Alexander, Civil War Veteran

My paternal great great grandfather John Alexander  enlisted at the end of the Civil War in February, 1865 at New Orleans, Louisiana.  I am trying to find out what happened at that particular time that allowed him to do so. Up until then he was a slave. 

John was first mustered into Company G 77^th Infantry USCT in March, 1865 and then Company K 10^th Heavy Artillery USCT, October, 1865. He served until he was mustered out in February, 1867,  his troop being the last to be mustered out in the Civil War. 

He applied for an invalid pension in 1890. According to his Civil War pension applications, he was run over by a wagon while he was unloading vessels on Ship Island, Mississippi. The injury to his hip and ankle caused him to limp for the rest of his life. 

I wanted to know more about his life during the war so I did a little research on Ship Island. Ship Island was a stretch of land twelve miles off the coast Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. The Island has since been halved because of  Hurricane Katrina.

My initial information comes from James Hollandsworth Jr. and the Mississippi History Now website. 

At the beginning of the War, Ship Island was considered a desirable piece of geography because of its proximity to Texas, Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans.  The Confederates evacuated it in 1861 and the Union held it to the end of the war. When New Orleans fell in 1862 to the Union, the garrison on Ship Island was reduced to one regiment of infantry, the 13th Maine. In December, 1862, eight companies of this regiment were transferred to other forts, leaving just two companies. On January 12, 1863, seven companies from a new regiment of Colored Troops, the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards, joined them. Unfortunately, this mixture of black and white troops was an explosive one, and within a week racial tension broke out into disputes between the men from Maine and the black soldiers from Louisiana. The two companies of white soldiers were withdrawn and the 2nd Louisiana Native Guards remained as the primary garrison for Ship Island until the end of the war.

Sunday April, 14, 2013,  the 150th anniversary of the 2nd Regiment, Louisiana Native Guards' successful assault on a confederate naval base at Pascagoula, Mississippi will be commemorated on Ship Island. 

The island once “considered the most healthy place on the Coast & would be a good place to establish a general hospital,” changed after the white troops left. An officer with the Sanitary Commission wrote an unfavorable report of the health conditions on the island and ended it with a remarkably understated conclusion.

“The wretched condition of Ship Island, a barren, desolate sand-spit, left free for the most part to alligators and such reptiles as abound in the swamps and lagoons of that region; the painful and variable climate; the sufferings of the men from diarrhea, influenza, and rheumatism; the badness of the food, which was of salt meat (no fresh meat being issued); the badness of the water, and the wretched system of cooking, made the presence of the Sanitary Commission not undesirable.”

Ship Island was used as a prison and detention center almost from the beginning. The first civilian detainees there from New Orleans were sent there in June 1862. Ship Island was also a prison for Union soldiers convicted of serious crimes. Confederate prisoners, more than 1,200 Confederate captives from New Orleans, arrived October 1864, The number of Confederates on Ship Island peaked in April 1865 when 3,000 prisoners taken with the capture of Mobile arrived. This would have been during the time that John was there. By May, all of the prisoners of war were sent to Vicksburg, Mississippi to be exchanged for Union soldiers. By June 8, 1865, there were no prisoners — Confederate, Union, or civilian — left on the island. 

I’m not sure how long John stayed on the Island. He was transferred to the 10^th Heavy Artillery in October, based in New Orleans, until he was mustered out.  

Sleuthing out the slave owner

I spent half of yesterday following the trail of names found on the civil war pension applications. I couldn't find the name of the last slave owner of John and Catherine Alexander but there were plenty of clues. Being a little gun shy, I don't want to say equivocally who it is yet but I'm pretty sure I'm close.

My aunt Hortense believed that the name of the last slave owner was Huffman. I had no reason not to believe her until I was told two other contradicting stories. However, I am inclined to believe that John Huffman was his last slave owner. Here is the evidence:

1. John was buried in Huffman graveyard according to the pension application for his widow.

2. Sylvester Ames, a comrade in arms, who also enlisted on the same day and location, stated that his slave owner was G.D. and J.W. Huffman. I believe that John and Sylvester came from the same locale and possibly the same farm.

3. Two of John's witness that stated they knew him most of his life were J.S. and Julia Felder. Julia was the daughter of John Huffman, the same Huffman that lives in the same area as John on the 1880 census.

This is my circumstantial evidence. However when I look at the slave schedules for Mississippi, I find corresponding ages for John, Catherine, and Sylvester but not for the young children of John and Catherine that were born in 1858 and 1860. And the schedule is for Amite County not Pike County. So I am not 100 percent sure. Yet.