Charles Myers was the odler brother of my third great grandfather Peter--the subject of one of my earlier blogs. Growing up I heard stories from my Great Grandpa Claude that either his Uncle or Grandfather had been captured during the American Civil War and sent to Andersonville Prison where he died. These stories are what fueled my love for Genealogy and History. I needed to find out. Was it the uncle? What is the grandfather? Was it both?
I began researching my personal family tree decades ago, picking at it here and there as a novice 13 year old trying to learn her way through the records my family left. Then life took over. I graduated high school, started college full time and working and sadly genealogy took a back seat. It wasn't until I started having my kids that I picked up my computed and really got back into the action. Determined to sort out this grandfather/uncle situation I began searching through Andersonville Prisoner of War records online. I knew my direct ancestor was named Peter Myers, and I located his information showing he was parolled out of Andersonville in Jacksonville, Florida in 1865. PERFECT! He didn't die in Andersonville. But who did? Or was my Grandpa Claude mistaken the whole time?
Set on confirming whether or not a relative died there I looked back at the 1860 census for the Myers family and searched for all of the military aged brothers that could have possibly served during the war and began ticking through them one by one. Peter was one of twelve siblings total, eight of which were males, and four (including Peter) served in the military during the war. I was quickly able to locate Henry, and Andrew in later records (censuses, marriages, death etc) but I could not locate Charles. Pivoting back to the Andersonville Prisoner of War database I was able to locate Charles...who died on 21 August 1864 from dysentery and was buried there on the grounds.
We were also able to put a long forgotten name to a face. A small photo likely no bigger than four by three inches in size, that my Grandmother has in a collage of old family photos, was that of Charles Myers. A photo taken, at the same studio, in the same town, around the same time as my third great grandpa Peter's, prior to going to war. This was by far not one of my hardest finds...it is one of my more meaningful. I was very close with my great grandpa, as a child until his death in 1995. Sorting out the stories he told me and identifying these men in records allowed me to prove his stories as fact with evidence. And while I was searching for these men...it was like going back in time for a short moment and hearing him tell me them all over again.