Headstone Record for Civil War Soldier David Bingaman

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Dawn Bingaman

NARA Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General

David M. Bingaman (1842-1896), served in the Civil War in Companies C, D, and E of the 20^th Indiana Infantry. Family lore has it that he was wounded in action at the Battles of Malvern Hill (1 Jul 1862) and Gettysburg (2 Jul 1863). He survived these wounds, but older brother, John M. Bingaman, whom David followed into the Army, perished in combat at Malvern Hill, Virginia. David went on to marry Amanda A. McKibben in 1871. They lived in Illinois, the Oklahoma Territory and Kansas. The couple had no children.

As a deceased Union Civil War veteran, his grave in Pomona, Kansas was marked with a headstone supplied at government expense in 1902, under legislation passed in 1879 (20 Stat. 281). Besides the allowance for grave markers for Union veterans in private, village and city cemeteries, the law stipulated

The Secretary of War shall cause to be preserved in the records of his Department the names and places of burial of all soldiers for whom such headstones shall have been erected by authority of this or any former acts.¹

Today, headstone records for interments in private cemeteries for the period between 1879 and roughly 1903 are part of Record Group (RG) 92 Office of the Quartermaster General. Per the catalog entry there are 166,000 cards that have been microfilmed on 22 rolls. The microfilm may be accessed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. or at regional branches of the National Archives. Nine 3” x 4” inch cards were microfilmed per frame. This microfilm collection has also been digitized, and is available at Ancestry.com as Headstones Provided for Deceased Union Civil War Veterans, 1879-1903.

Headstone card for 2 Lt. David M. Bingaman of the 20th Indiana

Information from the card is as follows:

Name: Bingaman, David M.
Rank: 2^nd Lt.
Service: Co. D, 20^th Regt., Ind[iana] Inf[antry]
Cemetery: Pomona
Cemetery Location: Pomona, Franklin Co., Kans.
Grave: [blank]
Date of Death: Nov 30 – 1896
Headstone Supplied by: Lee Marble Works
Contract Date: March 29, 1902²

I have not yet been able to ascertain whether applications for headstones made between 1879-1903 might exist, although I have seen earlier examples online at NARA, and catalog entries for the period following. This will be added to my to-do list when I attend the National Institute on Genealogical Research (NIGR) in Washington, DC in July 2013.

Excerpts From a Life: Samuel Fryman

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Dawn Bingaman

Newspaper excerpts from the life of Samuel Fryman (1807-1889)

I will never know my 3rd-great-grandfather, Samuel Fryman. None of his letters came down through our branch of the family. We have no photographs, no diaries or journals, no artifacts. Nothing tangible remains, other than his headstone in the old family burying ground in rural northwest Missouri.

His grand-daughter, my great-grandmother Maude Fryman Bingaman, died in 1921, long before anyone now living in that line remembers. Even the name of my 3rd-great-grandfather had been lost to us, and was only revealed through diligent research.

And yet, we can catch glimpses of him through the local newspapers from his community, available at the Chronicling America historic newspaper website. Certainly this does not tell the whole story of his life, but it does get us closer to learning at least some things he experienced while living and farming in Holt County, Missouri in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His lengthy obituary, near the end of this post, provides a wonderful sketch of his life, including the time he spent in the Home Guard during the Civil War.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 01 Mar 1872, p. 2, cols. 7-8

Feb 6, 1871 Samuel Fryman support of pauper 7.50
Aug 11, 1871 Samuel Fryman support of pauper 48.00

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 29 May 1874, p. 3, col. 3
—Sam Fryman, one of the well-to-do farmers of Holt county, started this week for Jewell and Graham counties, Kansas, where he intends to visit his sons.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 15 Jan 1875, p. 2, col. 4
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Fryman, who spent the holidays among their relatives in Fulton county, Illinois, returned last Tuesday, having enjoyed their trip remarkably well. Listening to the story of these friends, one would suppose the people in Illinois were in favor of good living.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 23 Apr 1875, p. 2, cols. 3-4

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85034039/1875-04-23/ed-1/seq-2/

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 25 Apr 1879, p. 3, col. 3
TOWN AND COUNTY.
–Who has Samuel Fryman’s colt? See advertisement.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 25 Apr 1879, p. 3, col. 8

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85034039/1879-04-25/ed-1/seq-3/

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 15 Aug 1879, p. 1, col. 4

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85034039/1879-08-15/ed-1/seq-1/

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 03 Oct 1879, p. 4, col. 1
–Samuel Fryman intends having a large sale of personal property at his residence, 3 1-2 miles east of Oregon, on the 25th of this month.

Newspaper: The County Paper (Oregon, Mo.), 09 Jun 1882, p. 1, col. 2
–Samuel Fryman has purchased the residence of Samuel T. Huiatt, in the northwestern part of our city.

Newspaper: The County Paper (Oregon, Mo.), 09 Jun 1882, p. 1, col. 7
— Mr. Samuel Fryman and wife have been in our city several days, the guests of his daughter, Mrs. F. A. Smith. Mr. Fryman, will shortly remove to Oregon, and take up his permanent residence among us.

Newspaper: The County Paper (Oregon, Mo.), 11 Aug 1882, p. 1, col. 1
–Samuel Fryman and grand-son, of Mound City, were visiting the family of J. Smith last week.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 23 Nov 1883, p. 1, col. 4
–Mrs. Fryman, wife of our esteemed citizen, Samuel Fryman, left last Monday for Cincinnati, Ohio, where she will be under medical treatment for cancer. We hope that she will return entirely recovered.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 07 Mar 1884, p. 1, col. 5
–Who enjoyed Samuel Fryman’s peaches?

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 02 Jan 1885, p. 1, col. 6
–Mrs. Samuel Fryman died at her home in this city on last Friday, of cancer.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 17 Apr 1885, p. 1, col. 6
Samuel Fryman is visiting relatives in Kansas.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 04 Dec 1885, p. 1, col. 5
Samuel Fryman and wife were visiting in the country Sunday.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 31 Dec 1886, p. 1, col. 4
–Samuel Fryman’s team ran away one day last week, throwing him out of his wagon, but fortunately he only received a few bruises that are not dangerous. His wagon was entirely demolished.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 08 Feb 1889, p. 1, col. 1
–Mrs. D. S. Alkire and youngest child, the children of E. L. Bonham and Uncle Sam Fryman are all on the sick list this week.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 15 Nov 1889, p. 1, col. 3
–Mr. Samuel Fryman and Mrs. Hannah Foster are lying very low, with but little hopes for their recovery.

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 22 Nov 1889, p. 4, col. 3.
DEATH ROLL.
FRYMAN.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90061417/1889-11-22/ed-1/seq-4/

Newspaper: Holt County Sentinel (Oregon, Mo.), 08 Aug 1890, p. 1, col. 4
C. Hoblitzell has purchased the Samuel Fryman block on Anderson boulevarde [sic] and will probably erect four handsome residences.

Chronicling America is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress. Digital images of all news items were last accessed on the Chronicling America website 14 Feb 2013.

For an overview of basic search and navigation of the Chronicling America site, please see my prior post here.

From PDF to Evernote

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Dawn Bingaman

In my presentation entitled “Evernote for Genealogists” given at the Seattle Genealogical Society last Saturday (10/6/2012), I demonstrated some ways in which genealogists can use Evernote to record their research as it unfolds. Even though I had 90-minutes and a three-page syllabus, it still wasn’t enough time or space to delve into some of the details. Since I find Evernote to be an indispensable tool, I have decided to use this blog to share the occasional tip for genealogists (or any researcher, really) wanting to incorporate Evernote into his or her digital research process. In this example, I will use the NGS Magazine to illustrate this useful application.

One of the benefits of membership in the National Genealogical Society (NGS) is a subscription to NGS Magazine, a quarterly publication filled with useful articles for genealogists. Members are able to access PDF copies of the magazine by logging into the “Members Only” section of the website. You could download and store the entire issue in Evernote, but that would take up unnecessary space, and invariably include material like advertising that you may not wish to archive.

Today’s Evernote tip is how to extract a few pages from a larger PDF file using Adobe Acrobat and save those pages in Evernote for later reference. There are several different ways to accomplish this task that come readily to mind. I will share one method here. In my example, I am using an older version of Adobe Acrobat Standard (version 6.0 for Windows) and the free Evernote desktop client version 4.5.8.

Download the complete PDF file to your computer.
Open the downloaded file in Adobe Acrobat (not the free Adobe Acrobat Reader – there is a difference).
Click the Pages tab on the left side of the window to expose thumbnail images of the pages within the file.
Click the first page you want to extract, then press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard. Click the other three pages (then let go). You should see blue borders around the four thumbnail images indicating your selection.
Right-click and select Extract Pages.
Press OK to confirm your selection in the Extract Pages dialog box.
Save your extracted pages somewhere you can find later by going to File > Save As on the Adobe Acrobat menu. Browse to the location you want to save to, rename the file if you like, and click Save.
In Evernote, click New Note.
Right-click in the newly created blank note and click Attach File.
Browse to the location you saved the file to in step 7, then click Open. Your extracted PDF article will appear in Evernote as a new note!

Extracted PDF article attached as a note in Evernote.¹ The article text and a portion of the photograph have been deliberately blurred since I do not have permission to republish the article. The attached article in Evernote is for my own personal research.

The photograph used by the author in the above article is part of the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs housed at the Library of Congress. See a close-up of the image here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011645302/.

¹ The article of interest was authored by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens, “Compiled Military Service Records, Part III: The record of events,” NGS Magazine, September 2012, 28-31; downloaded from the National Genealogical Society website (http://www.ngsgenealogy.org) : 07 October 2012.

[Post edited 2 Jan 2018]

Civil War Trust Infographic: “Battles of the Civil War”

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Dawn Bingaman

The Civil War Trust’s mission to preserve historic battlefields of the American Civil War (1861-1865) necessarily includes an educational component so the public understands why it is important to save this hallowed ground. To this end, they have published a great deal of information about the Civil War in general, and about specific battles in particular, on their website: CivilWar.org.

The Civil War Trust’s recently released infographic underscores the human cost of war by ranking Civil War battles by casualty rates, and comparing the loss of life to other wars and conflicts the United States has participated in.

Source: https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/battles-civil-war-infographic
Brought to you by The Civil War Trust

I’d like to highlight the section of the infographic showing overall casualty rates for the Civil War. Note the information in brackets, where it says:

Some modern research indicates that the number of Civil War deaths could be considerably higher.

The oft-cited figure of 620,000 dead in the Civil War has been challenged by historian J. David Hacker of Binghamton University in New York. In a December 2011 article published in the Civil War History journal, he suggests the death toll could be as much as 20% higher: 750,00 casualties instead of 620,000.

Read more about how Hacker calculated the new figures using digitized census data from 1850-1880 in these articles:

New Analysis Suggests Civil War Took Bigger Toll than Previously Estimated

New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll

Last updated 15 Jan 2018 to correct the infographic link

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Reining in my American Ancestors

Tag Archives: Civil War