Nathaniel Freeman and Dr. Kenneth Alford, Humanities
I decided to research Latter-day Saint participation in the Civil War when Professor Alford, a retired U.S. Army Colonel and BYU associate professor, contacted me regarding his interest in publishing a book on the topic. I had previously worked for him as a teaching assistant and had been interested in war history since I was in elementary school so I agreed and submitted my ORCA proposal. The purpose of my ORCA project was to document the service of Latter-day Saint Civil War veterans and how the Church as a whole was affected by that critical conflict. It was done in conjunction with BYU’s Saints at War project, which began 11 years ago with the aim of archiving Latter-day Saint war experiences. I met with Professor Alford numerous times in order to understand the assignments associated with this project. As I was awarded the research grant in the early stages of the Civil War project, I assumed numerous roles in helping to gather and organize materials to include in a book we are hoping to publish next year.
One of the tasks assigned to me was identifying relevant photos and organizing them. This turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated. I searched for photos from numerous sources, including the Harold B. Lee Library, the Utah Historical Society, the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Telescope (a Church photo database maintained by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and the Fort Douglas Museum. As I retrieved and downloaded the photos that matched the subject material and time period, I had to contact library and museum administrators as well as copyright attorneys to make sure we could provide proper, legal acknowledgement.
One of the more interesting tasks I had was searching for the names of Latter-day Saints who might have fought during the Civil War. We had a short list to begin with, but it quickly grew. I organized those names in a spreadsheet according to their rank, burial place, the unit in which they served, and other relevant categories. I had to develop an eye for understanding which data were most important; obviously, the fact that a veteran died in Utah did not necessarily indicate that he was a Latter-day Saint. I became very familiar with new.familysearch.org, ancestry.com, and other genealogy websites where I was able to search burial records, pension records, and ordinance records in order to find those qualifying individuals. I’ve come to enjoy using those websites and already feel comfortable enough with them to do my own genealogy research someday.
I was also involved in finding sources to include for our book, which mostly entailed searching Google Books and library databases. I found the work interesting and was able to become well-versed in archives, spreadsheets, copyrights, and, of course, Civil War history. I had previously worked in BYU’s Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library where I read, summarized, and archived numerous biographies of Latter-Day Saint veterans from the major wars of the nineteenth century so doing Civil War research was a natural fit.
One of the most crucial things I learned was the importance of communicating with one’s mentor, usually due to my failure in that regard. The time I was able to invest into the project ebbed and flowed, and I could have done much better at explaining when I was not able to complete a task. I hope to use the lessons I learned in future research projects, and I might get plenty of those opportunities down the road as one of my potential careers paths is in academia.
This Civil War project is on its way to becoming a published book, and I suspect the finished product will be impressive and one of the best resources on a topic that has been relatively neglected.
I would like to thank the ORCA Program for awarding this grant. I have developed a greater appreciation for the Civil War period in our nation’s history and also for the Latter-day Saints who were involved in that conflict. I have also learned a great deal about myself