Were any of your ancestors in the Civil War? There were more than two million soldiers in the Civil War. The majority of them fought in the battlefields located in Virginia. There is a new program called “Walk In Their Footsteps” that lets you track where your ancestor actually fought at. You can take a tour through those places if you visit Virginia.
“Walk In Their Footsteps” is a website that has been launched by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission. The website is highly interactive. Before you even start to dig into the resources it holds, you can easily follow it on Twitter or connect with it on Facebook, through the click of a button. Genealogists can use this website to create a customized “Battle Plan” itinerary that matches where their ancestor fought when he was a soldier in the Civil War. A search engine on the website lets you select whether your ancestor was a soldier for the Union or Confederate army. You can use drop down menus to select the state, branch, and regiment that your ancestor was a part of. It is best that you come to this website after you have already done your research, so you will know what to enter.
After you have finished entering all the data, you can begin making your itinerary by clicking on a tab that says “Engagements”. Most soldiers were with their units the entire time, unless they were severely injured. This means that if your ancestor’s regiment went to a particular battlefield, then chances are great that your ancestor was with them.
You will get a map that has pinpoints showing all the places that your ancestor’s regiment fought at. You can select to add each engagement to your itinerary individually. After your personal itinerary has been created, you can print it out. Genealogists will also get helpful information like directions to each battlefield, and locations of Civil War museums, Virginia Civil War Trails, and Visitor Centers that correspond to the battlefields that you have selected.
Once you are armed with all of this exciting information, it is time to plan your trip to Virginia. Many genealogists combine family vacations with a trip that is designed to let the genealogist gather more information about ancestors. You could take your family on a genealogy vacation this Summer.
The experience of walking through the actual battlefields where your ancestor was at during the Civil War can be a moving experience for many people. It connects you to that ancestor in ways that old photos and vital records simply cannot do.
Image by uberphot on Flickr