Tangent alert

So now that I have warned you about tangents and setting boundaries... I am off on a tangent. As I was working on filling out my files with expanded information on several ancestors I came across a new, to me anyway, tidbit of information that I wanted to share with everyone.

In my Thompson line I have me, my father, my grandfather, then Lex D. Thompson my Great Grand Father (GGF) then George David Thompson  2nd Great Grand Father (2GGF). I knew from Georges grave marker that he was a veteran.

What I did not know until yesterday was that he volunteered in 1898 for service as an Infantryman in the Spanish American War. He was assigned to the 1st Washington Volunteer Infantry Battalion, this has peaked my interest considering the unit was recruited and formed in and around Seattle Washington, and he was born and died in the Midwest. People didn't travel at that time like we do today, so that means that some time between the 1890 census and 1898 he made his way by horse or train from Indiana to Seattle, or that the information I got is wrong.

Lesson to be learned, before taking classes on genealogy, I probably would have set aside the piece of information connecting his with the unit in Washington, and probably would have figured it was a different George Thompson, since it is not a very unusual name. Now however I bring a more critical eye to my research. After a little more simple searching I found a grave marker request on Ancestry that George's wife Mary made just after his death. She sent a request through the War Department in 1936 to receive a free military headstone, it has his name, her name, their address in Illinois, and the unit that he served with. So in one piece of paper that was pretty easy to find I made a 99% certain addition to the information about an ancestor. Then things got interesting.

So after finding the grave receipt I went to a secret source I have that is very powerful for genealogy, they call it GOOGLE. I simply googled the unit name on the grave marker, and amongst all of the hits that popped up there was one that was interesting. It was an old page that had not been updated in a long time, it is kind of like the old hole in the wall bar that on the outside looks horrible, but when you get inside the food and atmosphere are amazing. They had full descriptions of almost every single unit that had participated in the Spanish American war.

George's unit was important for one reason, it's utter insignificance. The unit was formed in July of 1898 but failed to fill its ranks with enough volunteers, so they were given the title of 1st Washington Infantry Individual Battalion, they trained and organized trying to fill their ranks until October 1898 at which time the Treaty of Paris was signed and the battalion was mustered out. I mentioned it got interesting, well in further searching and after contacting a historian who wrote a book about the two Washington volunteer units, I found out that the unit lost one man, died of illness, and two men lost to disability from training, one of those two men was George Thompson. I have not yet received his records from the military but cannot wait to see if they have anything and what it tells me.

This page that I found the information on mentioned that the unit literally just ceased to exist, they are not sure if the whole unit was furloughed or what but there is no mention or record of them from the time the man died and two were injured until they are listed as mustered out in November of 1898. So I can't wait to see if there is anything interesting in his files. Tangent over I will return you to your normal program.