Ghosts In Daylight

The header at the top of this page is made up of family photos; the first three are Civil War veterans.  We have done lots of research over the years about these men, and have managed to find quite a bit of interesting information, and have visited many of the places they fought during the 1860's.  On the left is William Tweed.  He was born near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and moved to Oquawka, Illinois with his family when he was just a kid.  His father Abraham died when he was just ten years old, and William didn't like the treatment he and his siblings received from Abraham's brother who took them in, so William got on a horse and rode back to Fort Wayne to live with an aunt.  He rode back to Illinois two years later and took over the affairs of raising his siblings.  He signed up to go fight in the war after going to a rally, and you have to wonder what his pregnant wife had to say about being left to manage a farm all by herself.  He and his wife are buried at Bassett, Nebraska.

Second on the header is Jesse Morgan, who was born near Makanda, Illinois. He served in the Sixty-Second Illinois Infantry, and he was very bitter about his time in the military. He is buried in Ventura, California with his second wife. His first wife (my ancestor) is buried at Makanda.


The third fellow is George Hunt, who was born in Blount County, Tennessee, and moved to Crawfordsville, Iowa with his wife, Sarah Alexandar just before the war. He enlisted in the Twenty-Fifth Iowa Infantry, and fought through most of the Civil War, missing out on the Grand Review because of an infection in one leg. That infection killed him in 1870, and he is buried at an unknown location in Montgomery County, Kansas.


Matthew H. Jamison (Not an ancestor) was the lieutenant over Company E, Tenth Regiment, Illinois Infantry; William Tweed's regiment.  Mr. Jamison's book, Recollections of Pioneer and Army Life was a major source of personal information for us, and this book is one that I will be quoting from over the next few years as we follow the timeline of the war.

 The Introducton from Mr. Jamison's book:

     "Gone are they all!  The tints of youth; the tumult of battle; the old and worn and tattered banners; the neighing horses; the broken caissons; the prisoners of war; the Mississippi flotilla; the defiant rebel yell on the midnight departure from Corinth; Bragg's broken columns on the shifting field of Mission Ridge; the bloody repulse of Kenesaw and Marietta; the discomfiture of Hood before Atlanta; the exultant March to the Sea; the advance in storm and flood through the Carolinas; the bloody hour before Bentonville; the Surrender of Johnson at Raleigh; and the pageant on Pennsylvania Avenue following the funeral car of President Lincoln.  Gone are they all; and I too am soon gone!  In the fleeting moment the aging veteran, hat in hand, waves a  salute to the oncoming youth, bearing full high advanced the colors of his country to undreamed-of triumphs: for this is our warfare; no battle, no crown of Victory!

M. H. J.

October1, 1911.

Battle Mountain Sanitarium,

Hot Springs, South Dakota"