Civil War Books by Lewis G. Schmidt

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Books by Lewis G. Schmidt

1464 N. 39th St. Allentown PA 18104-2126

610 395 1661 email lewschmidt@aol.com

All books are developed entirely from letters, diaries, memoirs, official records, newspapers and and other contemporary records

A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers

954 pages, 406 illustrations

$75 plus $6 shipping & handling

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number LCN 86-62793

47TH HISTORY IS SOLD OUT

85 PAGE SPIRAL BOUND EDIT AVAILABLE $10 PLUS $3 S/H

The Battle of Pocotaligo, SC, October 22, 1862

318 pages, 907 end/footnotes, 89 illustrations

$40 plus $3 shipping & handling

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number LCN 93-92641

POCOTALIGO IS SOLD OUT

The Civil War in Florida, A Military History

(four volumes, six books)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number LCN 89-62014

Volume I, Florida's East Coast

Part I, 740 pages, 3,476 end/footnotes, 109 illustrations

Part 2, 785 pages, 4,081 end/footnotes, 72 illustrations

$80 plus $7 shipping & handling

VOLUME I IS SOLD OUT

82 PAGE SPIRAL BOUND EDIT AVAILABLE $10 PLUS $3 S/H

Volume II, The Battle of Olustee

410 pages, 1,695 end/footnotes, 100 illustrations

$30 plus $3 shipping & handling

Volume III, Florida's Keys and Fevers

1,134 pages, 4,366 end/footnotes, 156 illustrations

$60 plus $6 shipping & handling

VOLUME III IS SOLD OUT

Volume IV, Florida's West Coast and Panhandle

Part 1, 720 pages, 3,585 end/footnotes, 149 illustrations

Part 2, 770 pages, 3,562 end/footnotes, 70 illustrations

$80 plus $7 shipping & handling

VOLUME IV IS SOLD OUT

77 PAGE SPIRAL BOUND EDIT AVAILABLE $10 PLUS $3 S/H

A Civil War History of the 147th Pennsylvania Regiment

1,372 pages, 9,652 end/footnotes, 426 illustrations

$85 plus $7 shipping & handling

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number LCN 00-131192

14 COPIES 147TH HISTORY LEFT

In 1982, as a result of an anticipated visit to Key West, Florida, my wife Janeth and I made plans to visit the grave of her great grandfather's brother George Smith, who died from typhoid fever in Key West on July 6, 1862, while serving as an 18 year old private with the 47th Pennsylvania Regiment during the Civil War. According to family oral history he was buried in the Key West Post Cemetery which we discovered no longer existed.

Our inability to locate George's grave resulted in an intense five year research project during which we eventually identified 192 unknown dead at Barrancas National Cemetery in Pensacola, FL, and published a 954 page history of the 47th Pennsylvania Regiment, having discovered almost 1,000 letters of members of the regiment.

After visiting Key West in 1982, and examining available records and period newspapers, it was determined that the military had abandoned the Key West Post Cemetery in 1927. A Jacksonville undertaker was engaged by the government to disinter the 468 burials in the cemetery and arrangements were made to transport them on the US Tug Jenkins of the Army Quartermaster Department, to Barrancas National Cemetery at Pensacola. The operation was commanded by Major Tilton of the 13th Regiment of US Coast Artillery, acting as inspector for the 4th Corps Area.

While sailing north from the Keys to the Florida Panhandle on February 19, 1927, it was planned to stop at Tampa and load twenty bodies disinterred at Fort Dade, according to contemporary newspaper reports. Unfortunately, at this point in our investigation, all evidence concerning the eventual location of the bodies was missing from the available records. The Tampa newspapers recorded a storm at sea during the time period of the voyage and we speculated that the tug may have been in trouble somewhere along the Florida coast and may have been lost at sea.

Barrancas National Cemetery had no records or knowledge of the bodies being reinterred in the cemetery, and had no record of George Smith. The cemetery was unaware that such a group burial had ever taken place.

Fortunately, while we were researching in Key West, we had discovered a microfilm of the Key West New Era newspaper of September 13, 1862, in which 41 soldiers were identified as dying from yellow fever over a period of twenty days, from August 13 through September 11, 1862. Using this list to examine the files at Barrancas National Cemetery, several men on the list were identified as being buried at the cemetery. We concluded that if one of the Key West burials was identified at Barrancas, then all were buried there, having arrived together aboard the tug Jenkins.

We spent several days reviewing the records and walking and mapping the cemetery to attempt to develop a burial plan that might fit the 488 bodies that had been transported there by the tug Jenkins. A pattern of small numbers on the back of some of the tombstones was noted and a plan made of the location those burials. Time had confused their relationship as the cemetery was filled with more recent burials, and rows between the original sections were filled with these later burials.

The National Archives was contacted and arrangements made for a special microfilm of the Key West Post Cemetery records to be created. Using this record and other information that had been collected during our research, it was possible to identify 192 of the men who had been disinterred at Key West, as being buried in a group of 228 unknown graves at Barrancas. They were identified using the sequence of numbers on the back of the burial markers. We could not prove which man was buried in which specific grave, only that these 192 men were buried in a specific group of 228 graves. This was before we became involved with personal computers, and as a result, we had 1,000 file cards spread all over the floor of our residence.

Additional information uncovered in the National Archives told a sad story of incompetence on the part of the authorities involved in the operation, and their subsequent reprimand by the Inspector General.

Unfortunately, among other problems associated with the disinterrment and relocation, the tug had left Key West with 64 unidentified bodies. When it arrived at Barrancas National Cemetery, there were at least 228 unidentified bodies aboard, and another 26 that were lost to the records. Copies of our report and the records we gathered were donated to Barrancas National Cemetery, the National Archives and the Monroe County Library in Key West, Florida.

Letters and other materials gathered during this phase of our investigation seemed to demand that the history of George Smith's 47th Pennsylvania Regiment be improved from the seven pages in Samuel Bates' History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, to perhaps 20 or 25 pages, never dreaming that it would result in our publishing a 954 page day by day history of the regiment's service.

The 47th's 19 month service in Florida resulted in our publishing the four volume (six book) 4,559 page history of the the Civil War in Florida. The records gathered during this project have been donated to the Florida State Archives in Tallahassee, as the Lew Schmidt Collection, M91-10.

This was followed by a detailed published history of the regiment's first battle at Pocotaligo, SC.

Having been involved in the Civil War in depth for a period of 18 years, we felt a need to publish a history of the 147th Pennsylvania Regiment, the regiment of which my great grandfather George Buchman and his brother John were members.

We had now published nine books on the American Civil War, a total of 7,203 pages, and numerous other papers and related articles, developed entirely from letters, diaires, memoirs and contemporary materials gathered during our research.

Two additional books, covering the South Carolina and Georgia coastal areas (excluding Charleston which would be a book in itself) are in the process of being researched and compiled.

It has been a very expensive but otherwise rewarding involvement, with no profit except for the rewarding experience of enjoying the people we meet and are able to help, and the interesting places we visit. Having limited edition books you've compiled at institutions such as Harvard, Duke and many other archives throughout the country, even the James A. Archer Library in Australia, along with our grandchildren, is as close to immortality as we will get.

Lew and Jan Schmidt