skeletons updated

Further researches into my great-grandfather's history (see the post directly below this one) have turned up new information as well as a couple of discrepancies in my initial understanding, and these make clear why no serious historian ever relies on a single source.

The discrepancies and omissions are connected to the one important issue of the day, especially for a young southern male of that faraway time: establishing one's manhood and full citizenship in the crucible of the Civil War.

My great-grandfather, 23-year-old Timothy Brice and his brother, my great-uncle David, one year older, volunteered for service together in the 50th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Company "K" (Brooks County) on March 4, 1862. But when the regiment marched out of Savannah four and a half months later, traveling north where it would be attached to Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia , only David marched with them. He went on to participate in some of the bitterest fighting of the war, eventually meeting his death on the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, not at Gettysburg a year earlier as I previously wrote.

Timothy was left behind. He was discharged from the army on July 17, 1862, the same day the regiment marched from Savannah, and presumably returned home to Brooks County, where he later married, fathered 10 children, and lived out his days. Why he was discharged and under what circumstances I have not a clue.

It would take a very serious flaw in one's constitution or character to be unconditionally discharged from an armed force as desperate for manpower as the Confederacy's was. Perhaps my great-grandfather was gravely ill, or maybe he was painfully unfit for soldiering and warfare. In any case, Timothy Brice had a very short interlude in service and did no fighting for the C.S.A.

This story will be updated and completed some time in the future. Four of the five questions every historian and every reporter always asks (What, where, when, how, and why) are answered, but the final and most important one remains elusive. For now.

What little information that survives about my patrilineal ancestors demonstrates that for the American generation coming into maturity in the 1860's, exactly as it was for my father's generation 80 years later, the great and earth-shaking wars of modern times are the central and defining events which order their lives.

DB
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