This quest began with my personal search for information on my ancestors from the War Between the States. After doing the usual research of Consolidated Service Records and other such sources, I began browsing the newspaper archives for stories about them and the units they fought with. Sad to say, the information I found on these individuals was limited, but I did run across a number of other interesting articles; personal recollections, obituaries and often tributes written about the departed by his comrades from the war. Whenever I found one that sparked my interest, I would save it and sometimes share it in various genealogical venues. I would often hear from descendents of this person thanking me for this often unknown information and asking if I was also a descendent. I would always report back that sadly I was not, but found the story interesting.

That is when I decided to become more methodical about my approach for what was becoming a passion for me. So, I decided to more thoroughly research and grab all of the stories pertaining to individual soldiers and look into assembling them into book form. As is often the case, real life comes between me and such pursuits. Earning a living, spending time with family and other duties will assure that it will take some time to complete any such volumes for publication. With a large number of articles in my possession, I was feeling bad about keeping them to myself and bursting to share them. That’s when the idea for this website came about. I still plan to one day put these out in book form, but in the meantime they can be enjoyed and enlighten those who may not have previously had the opportunity to read them.

My main focus in this research is the individual soldiers and those who supported them on the home front while they fought the invasion from the North. In this effort, I have mostly ignored articles reprinting the well known official reports of generals of battles. Most of this can be found elsewhere and is not pertinent to my effort except in the rare case where a local soldier or officer is specifically mentioned. For these accounts, you can find them in the Official Records volumes in the historical rooms of larger libraries and they are well worth reading. What I found fascinating were letters to the editor from soldiers at the front, soldiers writing tributes to fallen comrades, reports of local officers who were home on furlough and news accounts of the local companies part in a larger battle. I was amazed by how much of this exists. That is the kind of thing you will find here.

Good question. My name is Keith Jones and I live in Graham, North Carolina. I started this site in November of 2006 as an outlet for the many hours I have spent in libraries trying to contain my joy over some obscure item discovered deep inside some roll of microfilm. Like most history and trivia buffs, I am constantly dying to share my finds with someone, but the bored teenagers sitting about the library reading back issues of People magazine or cruising My Space on the internet would hardly care. My circle of friends and colleagues registered a tiny bit more interest. So I decided to come to that great gathering place of those bursting to learn about the past; the Internet. So here I am. It is my sincere hope that you will find something of use to you in your research or something that enlightens or entertains you nonetheless. To me it is interesting discovering that these were real human beings doing what real human beings do in every time period; living their lives the best way they know how and playing individual roles in the larger whole know as history.

Enjoy your experience and welcome to my corner of the web.