Tips and Stories
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The Road Back to Wilkesboro: How an Indiana Boy Found His Mother’s Homeland in the Civil War
If you look closely enough at an old family tree, you start to realize that history isn’t just a collection of random names and dates. It is a living blueprint. Sometimes, the choices made by people generations apart seem to follow strangely familiar roads. That is one of the things genealogy has taught me. We…
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Nancy Ann Howell Rigney: Research Ongoing on a War Widow
An investigation into a War of 1812 widow, the loss of family support, a mysterious family Bible, and a pension interrupted during the Civil War. A Widow’s Story Hidden in the Records In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, a woman named Nancy Ann Howell Rigney spent much of her life living with the consequences of…
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Dillard C. Howell: The Brother Who Came Home
Gettysburg, Point Lookout, and the Family He Built After the Civil War On April 14, 1865, twenty-two-year-old Dillard Charles Howell arrived at Point Lookout, Maryland, as a Confederate prisoner of war. Eight days earlier, Union soldiers had captured him near Burkesville, Virginia. General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, but Dillard…
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Lorenzo Dow Howell: Two Wars, One Lifetime, and a Divided Nation
From the mountains of Virginia to Mexico, the Wilderness, and a prison camp in Maryland—the story of a carpenter, husband, father, and soldier whose life crossed two defining American conflicts. History remembers generals, presidents, and famous battles. Yet behind those familiar names were ordinary people whose lives became entangled with events far larger than themselves.…
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The Long Trail of the 4th Cavalry: How a Century-Old Legacy Met Me in Germany
Every soldier knows that the military is built on a foundation of unspoken connections. We wear the patches of campaigns fought before we were born, and we walk the parade grounds where legends once stood. But sometimes, history doesn’t just echo—it pulls over to the side of the road, looks you right in the eye,…
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The Roadside Ghosts of the A4: The Day My Family’s Past and Future Collided
Every soldier knows that the military is built on a foundation of unspoken connections. We wear the patches of campaigns fought before we were born, and we walk the parade grounds where legends once stood. But sometimes, history doesn’t just echo—it pulls over to the side of the road and stares you right in the…
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Are They From Where You Believe?
One of the first things we are often given when beginning genealogy research is a place. “My grandfather lived in Indianapolis.” “My family was from Illinois.” “My great-grandmother lived in this county.” Sometimes that information comes from a family member. Sometimes it comes from a family tree that has been copied and recopied. Other times,…
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From Ranks to Records: How an Old Military Ledger Brought My Family History to Life
My husband is obsessed with genealogy. For years, he has researched his grandfather, Joseph Robert Howell, following him through records and piecing together the details of his life. He has also repeatedly tried to draw me into the project. I usually resisted. Names, dates, and isolated facts simply do not stick with me, and genealogy…
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Building the Airfields of Victory: The Story of the 1877th Engineer Aviation Battalion
Like many families of World War II veterans, ours was left with more questions than answers. My father, Robert Gordon Howell, rarely spoke about his wartime service, and many of the details of his military career remained unknown after he returned home. It was only years later, after I began researching his service and obtaining…
