(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

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(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories, I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

If you may have seen a PBS program called Finding Your Roots.

It's very interesting how the the scholar Dr. Gates finds people of influence or celebrities or are others who you may have known about.

And he helps them trace their family roots back to as far back as they can go.

Well, it's an interesting thing.

And now with the internet and ancestry and all these tools that are available, a lot more people are doing it, and there's a lot more thorough research going on.

And somebody who would really know about this is the oral historian here at the Presidential Library, Mark Depew, who found himself in a situation where he became aware of great-grandfather's Civil War letters that were protected and kept in good condition by your grandmother.

And it led you on a little journey didn't it?

- Yes.

- Talk about it.

- But to start even before that, I was having a dinner with a fellow friend of the Military Officers Association, Polly Mayers is this woman's name.

And I mentioned to her that my dad had always said, "You know Mark, if you have a daughter and I have a daughter," that she could be a member of the DAR.

Boy, I didn't know what the connection was.

I gave her a little bit of information that here's my family tree back to the Civil War, and I think all the way back to 1802.

Well, she turned around a few days later sent me all this information that I had a great, great...

I had relatives too that served in the Revolutionary War.

- In the Revolutionary?

- In the Revolutionary War.

- Okay.

- So that was wonderful, and because Polly is a member of the DAR, she had her hands in all of the information and all the tools that you needed to have to be successful and find that out.

So I thought that was a great revelation.

That was something I didn't know about before.

And then we get to my great-grandfather's story.

And this is also on my father's side.

His mother's father was a civil veteran, but he was born near Grimsby, England, actually in this tiny little place called Ashby cum Fenby.

And back in 2008, I believe I took a trip to England and I tracked down this gentleman and he showed me around Grimsby, and then he went on to Ashby cum Fenby and found this ancient church there.

And in the back of the church, they had recently moved all the tombstones and they're all lined up.

And we'd go here to the slide you can see this line of tombstones.

- Oh my goodness.

- And we discovered my great, great grandparents tombstones themselves there.

And I had this box from my great-grandmother on the 166 letters that my great-grandfather had written.

He was born in this little place.

He came over from England in 1851 as a young lad.

I think he was only 13 at the time with his brother.

And as I started to put together some slides and some material to be able to tell my great-grandfather's story, I contacted one of our librarians here at Gwen Podeschi and she was incredibly helpful.

I was able to get her some information about the family name that they came with, 'cause these are Sizers, George Sizers (indistinct).

He came over with aunts and uncles named Barker.

I believe I know at the time they left from Liverpool and they left in 1851.

So that's when I reached out to Gwen here and find out some more gems about the family history.

- Well, we're going to talk her a little bit because she's done this before.

- Yeah I'm an amateur, these people are professionals.

- Thanks, we're gonna take a little break, thanks Mark.

So Gwen, like genealogy is kind of like putting a puzzle together and you gonna find the missing pieces, right?

- Exactly.

- So how did you help Mark find out how his ancestors came into the country?

- Well, I got lucky, I was using ancestry and using the immigration records on there.

And those records are very voluminous.

There been a lot of people that have come here and they were...

But we had some luck, they were coming from Great Britain.

Usually those records, and especially in the mid 19th century, very concise records.

They will tell you sometimes where they are going to, what town they've come from, how the relationships are.

And that all helped me verify the two orphaned brothers and connect them to their aunt and get them because they said they were going to Iowa.

And because I had a pretty close date, it's always good.

Sometimes you have to go real broad, sometimes real narrow.

Immigration records, it's good to know to have that good idea.

So anything that you know ahead of time can kind of help you fine tune the record.

- When you were able to connect the Sizers to the Barkers and that they came in at the port of New Orleans and went up the Mississippi to Iowa.

That must've been a thrill.

- It was, it was a thrill for him, it was a thrill for me.

I always loved it.

I've helped hundreds of people.

And it's always a thrill.

It's always so much fun to hit success.

And so that was a lot of fun and it also confirmed for me that, yes, this would have been typical, they were coming to Iowa, New Orleans certainly would have been the port.

Everybody thinks their families come through New York and Ellis Island.

Ellis Island didn't even exist in 1851 as a facility.

So oftentimes coming from Brittany or from Great Britain or coming from Germany, you will find people landing in New Orleans, especially because you have to remember that old Mississippi was better than a railroad and more people were going up and down it.

So it was a very, very typical story in that frame.

- Well, thank you.

Okay Mark, so great-grandpa goes up to Iowa, probably does some farming or something like that, but he's only here for 10 or 11 years and the Civil War starts right?

- Yeah, and like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants found themselves caught up in the Civil War.

I know practically nothing about what he did between 1851 and 1862 when he responded to Lincoln's call for 300,000 volunteers, both George and his brother, Robert in list in the 24th Iowa volunteer Infantry Regiment.

And then they get caught up in going through the basic training experiences.

They know nothing about the military obviously before that time.

But something happened where I'm guessing he was going to school as well as probably trying to make a living and met a young girl in school.

And that is a woman by the name of Elizabeth Thamer Bates, which we'll get to in a little bit.

And by January, 1863, this is not his first letter, he's written a few letters, and there's obviously some real, there's a connection there between the two.

And so let's listen to this first clip.

- And again, these are the letters that your grandmother saved.

- [Narrator] I want you to ride as often as you can, as I almost always go when mail comes in to see if you have remembered me at that time.

I received a letter from Lizzie today, there was also a note in it for Ms. Hannah Davis.

The first I have received from her.

Now, what do you think?

What do you think?

Well, nevermind, but you must not get angry and not write.

Or if you do, I shall write almost every day until you will answer me.

So if you do not want to have more letters than you can read, you must write.

I wish I could you as I used to see you and hear that merry laugh again.

Oh, how it would make my heart leap with joy to see you again and (indistinct) you once more.

And I want to come home and find Thamer still my own as she was when I left her.

I want her then to be my own dear wife, that will be the happiest day of my life.

- So this Elizabeth Thamer, is that the way it's pronounced Tamer?

Who ends up finally does marry him right after the war and becomes your great-grandmother?

- Correct.

- What do we know about her?

- Well, there's a little bit of information about her.

Her father and mother were both, well, father was born in Canada, her mother in Ireland.

She was born in 1848.

So if you do some quick math, she's what?

13 years (indistinct).

- She's very young.

- And you know, maybe they met when she was 12 and he was like 22 years old at the time.

So he's 10 years older, but he's of an age now where he's getting more serious about it, and she was obviously receptive.

But that's what I want to emphasize here.

You can see a picture of her probably taken a couple years later, very young girl.

And again, my supposition is that they met in school.

And you can, your imagination can race afterwards about the things that might have happened underneath the apple tree someplace or on the playground or in church or in school as well.

- He would've been 20 in school at the time they would have- - He would have been in his early 20s, yes.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so let's go to the next one because we get to his experiences in the war.

Now, what happens after he deploys, he goes to Arkansas, Helena, Arkansas, and it's absolutely the worst place to be 'cause it's described as nothing but a mud hole, mud, mud everywhere.

But it's obviously early in the Vicksburg campaign and you'll list as Grant's Vicksburg campaign.

And so he's caught up in that and there are several different engagements.

That's a very complex campaign that goes on for six months or more actually longer than that 'cause it begins in the fall of 1862 and goes way into the summer of 1863.

He was part of the group that landed at Grand Gulf at the bottom left of this map, marches his way with his core, with his regimen all the way up to Jackson, Mississippi, and then the whole army heads East.

This is one of the most revolutionary moments of the Civil War because grand, after he gets to Grand Gulf is living off the land with his entire army.

They're living off the land.

And that was something that nobody thought you should do.

That is outrageous, you can't do that.

Grand did it.

He was able to pull it off.

And in the process, they get to Champion's Hill, which is the major engagement of the Vicksburg campaign.

And mind you right after this, you've got to Gettysburg campaign as well.

You've got these two huge campaigns, one in the Western Theater, one in the Eastern Theater.

So let's go ahead and play a clip now of my great-grandfather explaining his part of the action at the Champion's Hill.

- [Narrator] Again, I write and can announce myself alive and well by God's mercy, for who but him could lead me safe through through fierce the shower of death and destruction.

It would be vain for me to attempt to describe so fierce a battle.

On the 16th day of May, we was told the enemy was ahead of us.

So we was taken into a rye field and formed into a battle line where we send our skirmishes who found the enemy and the work of death began.

First, the first per grade of our division, then two regiments of the second came into action.

Then we was called upon and away we went.

We soon captured a rebel battery of four guns, but had no support so we was driven back again and a large number of our men killed and wounded.

I was in the whole of it, but did not know a man was hit until we received orders to fall back then I looked back and saw half of the company was down.

Our regiment loss in killed and wounded 201, but it was bravely done and worthy of the name of Iowa soldiers.

Our regiment lost the most men in that fight, more than any other one in our company the most of any company.

We was the last company to leave the ground and that only when 29 men of ours lay on the ground and some of them, we took away with us.

What monster war is here.

It teaches us to kill our fellow mortal and joy in it.

- Mark we were talking about the fact that your great-grandfather was not a great writer...

He was not a grammartacian, but you can tell by what he was writing there, he was a good thinker and his choice of words, it's very concise and it's sentimental too.

It grabs you.

- Yeah, it's absolutely great I think.

Most of the letters aren't necessarily up to this part, but he can rise to the occasion.

This is a watershed moment in his life.

How can it not be?

Out of 56 men in his company, 29 or casualties that day, that's astounding.

And that has a lot to say with why they didn't participate in any of the charges, any of the attacks at Vicksburg, which is gonna occur just a couple of weeks later.

They were part of the siege, but they never were part of those attacks because that whole regimen had been decimated.

- Completed, yeah, yeah.

- So after this they are transferred.

His entire core is transferred to General Banks who is in New Orleans, and General Banks starts what is called the Red River campaign.

One of the least successful campaigns for the union during the Civil War.

It was a bus pretty much all the way through.

But while he's down in New Orleans, and this extends now into 1864 as well.

While he's in that area of the country, he's already been experiencing lots of things.

He's been beaten up pretty well, and he gets ague and he finds in convalescent camp and then transferred to a hospital in New Orleans shortly after that.

And so this next letter we find, and he's not telling everybody about this until he's in the hospital.

This is the firsthand that he's got some serious health problems, but he tells Tate what's going on.

- [Narrator] I expect you will think it takes me a long time to write a letter, but I will now give you the reason of it taking so long.

I was at the hospital and most all the sick was examined and those who was fit for duty was sent off to the regimen, and those who was not fit for duty was sent to the Infernal Corps or as they may have named it, the Veteran Reserve Corps.

I was put in the last named Corps.

I tried to get to the regimen again, but they would not let me go.

They said the climate and the sleeping on the ground would make me sick again.

So I had to submit, and I am going to Washington soon.

I am now second Sergeant in the 10th company, of Veterans Reserve Corps, but I am so bad in temper to think I have to leave my regiment that they think I am a rough fellow.

And I tell you, I make them get round on a double quick.

I shall send you a likeness in my new suit when I get to Washington and let you see how sick I look in a jacket.

- Mark you mentioned, we're talking about his hospitalization.

You mentioned the disease ague.

- That was a term- - I think we hear that anymore.

- That was a term that they used at the time to describe malaria.

Why wouldn't have malaria, there in New Orleans, in the middle of the summer and the heat.

But that was just one of the things that he had.

One of the legends in the family though, this isn't in any hospital or his health records even after the war, but there's always a story that he had a heat stroke or some kind of heat injury.

And why wouldn't he?

He is on these and these extended marches and campaigns in the middle of July and August timeframe and in Mississippi.

So it's natural that he's gonna have that as well.

And then after this hospitalization, he gets on a ship that had, I think, first in New York, but in the prospect of doing that, he's on the ship and he falls down in a hatch and hits his head.

And so he's now got another injury on top of everything else going on.

And even before that time, the army has decided he's not fit for frontline duty.

So as he said, he's gonna be in this Veterans Reserve Corps.

Posted to Washington DC.

I love that picture of him.

The uniform doesn't look right, but they have a different uniform for the Veterans Reserve Corps.

And then another friend of mine was able to verify that, Oh, that's the uniform, the Veterans Reserve Corps had.

And you can see is that Sergeant stripes (indistinct).

A pretty young Sergeant, but now he's got some heavy responsibilities.

And he's a man in love.

So he wrote this poem, I think and he sent it all home to Tate.

- [Narrator] Father and this holy evening while the Sabbath lingers on will thou hear my rude petition for I feign would seek thy throne.

Help me to resist temptation, lead me in thy chosen way.

Hear, oh, hear my humble service for a being loved I pray.

She's dearer than the mother who has been my life's fond guide.

She is dear than the brother though the brother is still my pride.

Father, let that choices blessings rest upon her beauteous head.

God through peril and temptation smooth the pass where she must tread.

Be her guide and for each sorrow, for the blight, the cloud, the storm.

So prepare her that each morrow on a cheerful heart may dawn.

Father, if the loved hear her, lend her path one ray of light.

If that love one punk and spare her aid me still her way to light.

- My great grandpa's in the service for over two years, hasn't had a leave.

But now it's 1864 and it's time to vote.

- Yeah, and that was a big moment in American history.

It wasn't until just a few months before that time that Sherman captures Atlanta, that the vote was very much in question.

There was a lot of people, they weren't taking a lot of polls at the time.

How could you?

- Yeah.

- A lot of people thought that Lincoln was gonna lose that election and that might end the war somehow.

So there was a great concern and they tried to get as many people as they could back to their home state.

He doesn't mention why he went back on furlough in November of 1864.

I gotta believe the reason he's gone back is so he can vote in the election.

But it doesn't come up in his letters and it doesn't come up in my great-grandmother's letter, and I have one or two of hers as well.

So he goes back home.

And then we get this incredible letter that he wrote after he's heading back East, it's probably on a train someplace and jotting this stuff down about that relationship that really blossomed obviously when he's back home.

- [Narrator] When I first left you, I was inclined to come back and bid you goodbye once again.

But I got away at last and pushed for Israel's house, but the very soul scene gone out of me.

And when I got to Israel's, Lizzie wanted to know of me what was the matter for I could not say a word to anyone scarcely.

I had no heart to do it.

She joked me some, but I took no notice of it.

So she gave up the job as a bad one.

I declare I have become absent-minded and scarce to know what I am doing half the time.

Tate, I knew you loved me before I came home but did not know you loved half so well as you do.

God knows I have been mean to you but I hope you will forgive me and love me as well as ever you did before you knew art of the Hannah Davis affair.

I did not see her to bid her goodbye for I want her to understand it is you alone I love, and I do not want that she should be in my darlings way and in the least.

The last night spent with you will be remembered long, and God bless you did Tate.

The better I know you the more I love you.

- He's a man in love and he sees the Wars coming to an end.

He's gonna get to go home.

- Yeah, and wouldn't you like to know more about the Hannah Davis affair?

- I wondered about that.

I said, no, wait a minute here.

- And the other thing I would have liked to know more about was that last night they spent together, but I'm sure that's something that my great-grandmother took to her grave.

And you can understand why?

Of course we can.

- So this was not a one-way relationship, Tate wrote a little bit too.

- But it's not surprising.

The soldiers weren't able to keep the letters that they got from their loved ones because of what their experiences were.

I had this one and I suspected had a lot to do with him being a Washington DC, but it's also a very revealing letter.

- [Narrator 1] According to my promise, I now write to you.

It is very lonely today and especially so when I think of last Sunday.

It was first about this time you and I sat in meeting aggravating poor Hannah.

If I had known then what I do now, I would not have sat there.

Oh, George, I wanted to talk to you so bad.

I feel very happy today and I'm sure you would too if you were here.

I asked my mother last night if she once thought there was anything more than friendship visiting between you and I.

She said she had, and she thought she had good reason for thinking so, but she had nothing against it.

Only that I was pretty young as well as herself, but she wished me to do well.

It was joy to me to hear her say so and I want to know if it is to you to know it.

You see George, does it make you hungry?

Shall I not send you a piece of bread and butter?

- He goes back to Washington, DC.

He's anxious to have the war end like the entire nation is by that time.

The war looks like it's closing up, it's April.

And then on April 12th, he's leading a patrol in Washington, DC that happens to be one of the most important dates in American history 'cause that's the date that, that Abraham and Mary Lincoln go to booth theater to see a play.

And I think I'll just turn it over to listen to what he said.

- [Narrator] I was in Washington on duty in the winter of 1864 in spring of 1865, was on the seventh street patrol on the night of April 14th.

And as everything seems so quiet, we took a shortcut to our quarters, passing down in street on which lives Secretary Stan.

About halfway between his house and the war department we met Secretary Stan and about 50 feet behind him were two men who crossed the street and went off in the dark instead of meeting the patrol guard.

We passed into Jackson square and stood looking at the white house with its many lights.

All at once an alarm of fire rang out on the air and the fire engine at the corner by the war department started up the Avenue with the rush and we broke ranks at once.

Some going to see the supposed fire and some going to in Washington Circle.

We had (indistinct) arrive there five blocks away, (indistinct) orderly dashed into the camp and cried fall in fall in President Lincoln is murdered at Ford's Theater.

The long roll was beat.

The men rushed out into the circle half dressed, but carrying their rifles into which they were ramming down the cartridges and with groans, both fierce and deep threatening dire vengeance on the murderers and declaring they would burn the theater to the ground.

The officers got the men together as best they could and forming a guard at once March to the theater allowing no one to come near it.

We were there told that as the president was sitting his eyes fixed on the stage, someone came to the rear of the box in which set the presidential party.

Then all at once a pistol shot rang out and the president fell forward.

A man spring out of the front of the box on the stage catching a spur and the curtains as he did so.

As he crossed the stage he said, "Sic semper tyrannis."

The model of Virginia meaning first to be at ever to tyrants.

Also adding the South is advantaged.

The people saw it was John Wilkes Booth, and has he passed out the rear door they turned to look at the president and saw he was shot in the back part of the head.

And the lifeblood of the president of the United States died.

The theatrical robes of the actress, Laura Keene on his lap, his head rested.

The president died in the morning and his body was conveyed to the white house and laid in the East Room where I and many others saw him lay.

Yes, there lay our martyred precedent in the hour that his armies had triumph over the rebellious South.

The man who's emancipation proclamation had freed 4 million slaves and made them free men and women lay now before us in death stricken down by the hand of an assassin.

- So George and Tate get married, and they have a very fruitful marriage.

- July of 1865, because of his injuries, he was a farmer.

I got the sense, he was never a very good farmer, but he had malaria and I'm sure he had repeating bouts of malaria over the years.

But they were married, they had eight children.

The last of the eight children was born in 1887, long after the war.

That's my grandmother, grammar Alice.

She gets married late in her life and in 1929.

So she's 40 years old when my father was born in 1929.

So that's why there seems to be a missing of a generation in there.

And two cases, my grandmother was born late in her father's life.

And then she had my father late in her life.

- Thank you for sharing all this with us and our viewers.

This has been a lot of fun, very interesting.

- I think so, of course, I'm a little bit biased, but as you might've noticed, there were moments when he was extremely articulate and eloquent and bringing all the emotions as well.

And the fun of the relationship that they must have had is an endearing mystery.

- Thank you, Mark.

Well, you may not have 160 Civil War letters in your possession or in your family background.

But watch Finding Your Roots.

It'll give you some hints on how to get started.

There's online, assist assistance like ancestry.

So if you're interested in this kind of thing the information is out there.

With another Illinois Story in Springfield.

I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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