Wow, very interesting. I don't know if any of my forebears fought in the Civil War, but I guess they probably did

Yeah, it's hard to imagine a personal connection to the Civil War, however sifting through all those handwritten documents and requests, it was almost as if it came alive.

Also, due to some other dredging that my father and uncle did, we found that we had a great uncle, from a NY regiment, with the first name "Barzilla" (!) that was killed at Chancellorsville along with his two sons. This is clearly pointing out the obvious, but the Civil War was absolutely brutal.

Let's see if I can get either of my kinfolk to offer some perspective on this subject.