Need Help Interpreting a Union Civil War Record

[talesofthesevenseas]

Hey gang, this is a bit off-topic, but I was wondering if you guys might be able to interpret some of the info on my great-great-grandfather's Civil War pension record. This is all there is, I don't find any regular service records for him.

In the first record, it says "B. (??) Co. Mass. Infantry" which I think would be B. Somebody Company, Massachusetts Infantry.

In the second record, Co (Company) is crossed out, then "18 Unatt." (Could Unatt be unattended?) then Regt (Regiment) is crossed out and it reads "Co. Mass. Inf" (Company, Massachusetts Infantry) Would 18 be his age or the Regiment?

He was born December 2, 1848 and would have been in his teens during the war. However, he seems to have been able to claim a pension as an invalid, and his widow was also able to claim a pension.

Any ideas on what I'm looking at here?

[talesofthesevenseas]

I just found my answers:

Name:     Hodijah L Tisdale
Residence:    Taunton, Massachusetts
Occupation:    Nailer
Age at Enlistment:    18
Enlistment Date:    12 Jul 1864
Rank at enlistment:    Private
State Served:    Massachusetts
Survived the War?:    Yes
Service Record:    Enlisted in Company 18th, Massachusetts 18th Infantry Company on 07 Dec 1864.
Mustered out on 12 May 1865.
Birth Date:    2 Dec 1848
Death Date:    28 Mar 1923
Sources:    Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Civil War
Massachusetts GAR: Journal of the Annual Encampment
GAR Dept of Massachusetts 1866-1947 (Sargent)
   
Regiment:     18th Infantry Company Massachusetts
Date of Organization:    6 Dec 1864
Muster Date:    12 May 1865
Regiment State:    Massachusetts
Regiment Type:    Infantry
Regiment Number:    18th
Regimental Soldiers and History:    List of Soldiers

Regimental History
MASSACHUSETTS
18TH UNATTACHED INFANTRY
One Year

Unattached Companies, Infantry.-In addition to the
various organizations previously described, Massachusetts
furnished during the war thirty companies of infantry, the
enlistments generally being for short terms of service. These
companies served either in the coast forts of the state or at
interior points where needed, and were known as unattached
companies unless otherwise designated. Occasionally a company
served for more than one term.

Eighteenth Company.-Capt., Otis A. Baker (100 days and
one year). As a 100 days' organization it numbered 3 officers
and 81 men, serving without loss; as a one-year company it
numbered 3 officers and 98 men and lost 1 man by disease. It
was organized and mustered into service at Readville for 100
days, Aug. 6, 1864, was stationed at Camp Meigs, Readville,
during its term and was mustered out Nov. 14, 1864. It was
reorganized for one year's service at Taunton, was mustered in
Dec. 6-7 1864, again served at Readville, and was mustered out
May 12, 1865.

He appears on a list of soldiers with the 18th Regiment, 18th Mass Infantry.

[talesofthesevenseas]

An interesting side note to this, he and one of my other great-great-grandfathers were on opposite sides of the battlefield at Gettysburg. Not an uncommon thing for American's with both Union and Confederate ancestors, but what a trip to think about.

[sapphire]

Tales that's a wonderful heritage item. It must be so satisfying to be able to own actual documented history of your
family. You certainly weren't long tracking down all that info!!

[KC]

Great history and information there Tales.  Which site did you find the information on?

We are researching our family history right now and are having to decipher items as well.

[talesofthesevenseas]

I've found it worthwhile to have a paid subscription at Ancestry.com. I balked at subscribing originally, but later realized that by contributing to the site, I help pay for them to aquire more and more data. It has been an investment that I feel has paid off for me. I cancel the subscription when I'm not actively pursuing genealogy stuff and resubscribe when I am.

I have found that by creating a family tree, a lot of stuff that gets missed on searches, gets automatically funneled into the tree in the form of "hints" that you review and if they are correct for your ancestor, you add as source records to the people in your tree.

That was how this happened.  I was actually polishing this ancestor's silver spoon that is in my collection yesterday, (I'm working on getting that ready to show you guys per the earlier request) and I got to thinking that I needed to get his info into the family tree I have set up on Ancestry. So I started plugging it in and all the hints started racking up. I found only the pension at first and no military records came up on the searches I ran. But when I logged out and back in again later, the hints had found the source record and funneled it in.

The funny thing is that the NARA military records are now all available on http://www.footnote.com and I'm only able to locate the pension record for him so far, but obviously there is more there. I think the trouble is that it is not coming up by his name and because this is kind of a funny regiment/infantry number and the whole unattached infantry thing, I'm not picking up the other records. I need to make sure also that the 18th Regt 18th Inf that was at Gettysburg was actually this same unattached regiment. It is hard to tell at this point, but I should be able to get to the bottom of it with a little digging.

I thought this ancestor had misssed the war due to his age, and the fact that my grandmother had never mentioned anything about it, and she was quite involved with our Rev War ancestor's history. It surprises me that no note of this was ever made and makes me wonder if his participation was without any actual battle experience. So I need to investigate this a lot further.

[KC]

I have been contemplating joining.  Hadn't met anyone that had.

Have alot of information that family members had all found...and when I mentioned it and all of them have sent me what they had.  So I am merging it all together.  You know it rings true when alot of it overlaps.  Then the digging comes and when it conflicts or some juicy information comes up - such as the great, great, great grandfather being illegitimate and raised by his grandparents.  Only to find a record that the grandparents had 5 children and 2 of the boys sued him for his part of the inheritance that the grandparents left to him (they actually won because birth sons were granted precedence over his status - so I want to get my hands on the court records to see who they say is his parents).  Was believed that one of the sons who never married was the father (because he left his entire estate/farm to him).  However, in another paper received from another relative it states that he was believed to be a nephew being raised by my G, G, G, G, G grandparents.  Ah....the mystery!!!!!!! 

Funny thing....distant family WILL NOT answer any questions and hangs up when anyone called to try and find out the information after all of these years.  (Holding grudges from the 1800's is something you read about...never thought you would meet anyone willing to be angry over something noone alive for years and years had anything to do with it)!  (If he was...then it would have really caused a stir back then because the brother was a big wig politician in the South!)

Might be fun to stir the pot when I get round to it!  LOLOLOL

[talesofthesevenseas]

You have to request court records from the county or court archives. I had to do this a while back to get copies of a 600 page Chancery Court case involving my gr-grandfather. It's a land dispute that has a goldmine of genealogical info. He and his brothers had too much to drink and supposedly signed away their rights to 5000 acres of land inherited through a Rev War land grant. What's neat is that everyone had to swear in court to their line of descent from the Rev War ancestor, so there is lots of great info, but it's about half hand-written, half typed. I ended up buying two reels of microfilm because it is so labor intensive to sort through it that it can't be done on the time allowed by a typical loan program. (Not by a working gal anyway!)

What you need to do is to find out the county where the case took place and start looking on that county's Web site to find out where their court archives are stored. Call them up with as much info as you can gather and go from there. If you can find a court case number, the approximate date the case was tried in addition to the names you have it can help. Anything to get the ball rolling. I found the people I worked with were very helpful.

[KC]

Thanks so much for the help Taleof!!!!

[talesofthesevenseas]

Good luck with that!