Civil War Stories

[Christine]

Today I was visiting with my children's high school history teacher; he's always been really interested in my Frederick Aiken research and so I was filling him in on some of the recent updates - the headstone, etc.

I remembered that one of my children told me he had a relative who fought for the Confederacy, so I asked about that. He said that his direct ancestor's cousin was killed at the peach orchard at Gettysburg, but he wasn't sure about many of the other details of his life - he thought he might have been from Missouri, and that he might have been related to Jefferson Davis.

Well, one google search later (what did you all do before google?) and I found that my children's history teacher's relative was Jefferson Davis' nephew! He fought with Barksdale's Mississippians, and his wife was visiting the Davis' at the Confederate White House when Isaac Davis Stamps received a furlough and visited with his uncle and his wife and family. He confided to his wife that he feared he would not survive the next battle.

His wife was still at Richmond when they heard word about the Battle of Gettysburg. Jefferson Davis and Mary Stamps prayed together for the safety of Isaac. But they received word that he had been killed, and Davis was devastated. He pushed through tons of red tape to get Union permission for them to remove his body to be re interred at the Davis Plantation - Rosemont Plantation in Mississippi.

I'm excited for my daughter to be in his class next year when he teaches about the Civil War with this new information about his relative.

I just LOVE making these wonderful historical connections!