A Bit of Amanuensis Sharing and a Story of the Civil War

I really like the GenaBloogers web site. It's a rich haven for those of us nuts enough to go a-blogging about this genealogy stuff. They suggest topics every day so if you don't have the blogging muse perpetually at your side ... just go to GenaBloggers and pick out a suggestion that fits your mood. Here's the link to their site, but you'll probably see them on the recent postings that pop up over there on the right: http://www.geneabloggers.com/

Today is Amanuensis Monday. The site says, "Amanuensis is a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another." OK, I've done that so here's some sharing.

James Snider  is my mother’s first cousin 3 times removed. He's Mom’s maternal great grandfather, Samuel Albert House’s ( 1832 – 1917) mother’s (Rebecca House 1808 – 1851) sister Mary’s son. James Snider was born in 1840. He lived in what’s now West Virginia, and mustered in the Second Potomac Brigade of the Union Army at Cumberland, Maryland in late August, 1861. He was there to sign up on the very first day, August 27, 1861.

The Second Potomac Home Brigade was attached to the Railroad District in West Virginia and mostly employed guarding the B and O Railroad from Keyser to points east of Cumberland. The railroad was one of the strategic advantages of the Union forces as supply lines. He signed up to serve three years but only made it to New Years Eve of his enlistment year before getting shot. He died the next day.  

Seems that the Company got drunk - because that's sort of what some people do on New Years Eve, especially if you are a young guy with a bunch of other young guys and not at home. One of the men in his company, Rudolph Luteman, took his rifle and shot and killed our ancestor, James Snider.

I accessed both his and Luteman’s Civil War records at NARA through Footnote.com. The letter Leutman wrote to the commanding officer from his holding cell pleading for mercy seven months after the shooting was easy to find. Here is a section of the letter.

“I did not bring in the whisky, on which I got drunk, but I received it from friends, and I swear you that I never left my post or slept on it. It is stated by witnesses that I had not the intension to kill him, and I never (?) quarreled or had differences with the killed man before.”

Luteman escaped a month later. Funny thing is I see records for a guy with the same name mustering in again in Cumberland, 28 Sept, 1864. Wonder if it's the same Rudolph Luteman?

The Luteman Letter