Research

Searching for Albert Walton: A Gallery of Resources

These documents that explain the course of Albert Walton’s life during the Civil War were found in a wide variety of places. It all started sixty years ago with a family photograph. . . .

~ Mary Louise Clifford

This is the photo that started the author’s search for material to document her grandfather Almon Beneway’s life.

In 1956 Al’s Compiled Military Service Record was obtained from the National Archives. Al changed his name to evade his mother and lied about both his age and birthplace.

After the war regimental histories were compiled for most regiments. The History of the Seventy-fifth Regiment of Indiana Infantry Volunteers mentions Albert Walton three times.

The story of Al’s capture at the Battle of Chickamauga appears on p. 176.

In 1966 Bands and Drummer Boys of the Civil War, by Francis A. Lord and Arthur Wise, was published. Al’s story, taken from the regimental history, is found on pp. 100-101.

After 2000 census records became available on-line. In the 1860 census Al was living in Springfield, Illinois, with his mother Emily, half-brother Emile, and sister Josephine.

A first-cousin-once-removed had inherited Al’s hand-written “memoir” and shared it with the author so that some of Al’s history is related in his own voice.

A member of Al’s regiment kept a journal, published in 2005: Fighting for Liberty and the Right: The Civil War Diary of William Bluffton Miller. Miller calls my grandfather “Little Al drummer boy of Company C” in an incident when General Reynolds was reviewing the regiment and dismounted from his horse to talk to Al.

This matrix includes 43 of the Seventy-Fifth Indiana Volunteers who were wounded or captured at Chickamauga. It was compiled by the author from the regimental roster and the men’s individual Military Service Records, found in National Archives Record Group 94, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1762-1984.

Ten of the 43 comrades who survived the war applied for pensions. In Private Bortsfield’s application the author found a hand-written letter signed by Albert Walton, explaining why he could not support the private’s request for a pension.

Sergeant Jacob Lair’s pension application contained a long affidavit written by Albert Walton, attesting to the war-time disabilities that made Jacob’s request for a pension legitimate. The affidavit said that Jacob had been Al’s bunk-mate during the war, that Al had cared for Jacob through a serious fever in Frankfort, Kentucky, and that they had gone together to Al’s home in Indianapolis when the war ended and remained in close association there until Al left Indianapolis in 1876.

The author chose a hand-written report from National Archives Record Group 109, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, 1825-1900, to verify Al’s account of his time in Andersonville: “Observations upon the Disease of the Federal Prisoners confined in Camp Sumpter [sic] Andersonville, in Sumpter County, Georgia, instituted with a view to illustrate chiefly that Origins & Causes of Hospital Gangrene, the Relations of Continued & Malarial Fevers, and the Pathology of Camp Diarrhoea [sic] & Dysentery” by Joseph Jones, Surgeon. P. & C. S., Professor of Medicine (Chemistry) in the Medical College of Georgia, at Augusta, Georgia. National Archives, Record Group 109, “Reports on the Conditions at Andersonville Prison.”