Library Forum

Easter greetings to forum members.

I know that this is a place to post about Clare's history, but some of its
history were Clare men who left for Canada and the U.S., who once
again were united in the Union forces involved in the U.S. Civil War of
the 1860s. Thus you will see Clare-type surnams on this site detailing
Canadians who served in the Civil War.

http://ca.geocities.com/cancivwar/database.html

Sharon Carberry
Researching Carberry in Montreal 1850s and '60s only
http://home.comcast.net/~sm8carberry/Carberry.html

Sharon, you have a lot of experience in the archives and you live in an area which was heavily affected by the American Civil War. Do you happen to know whether anyone has compiled an index or roll-call of Clare people who fought in that war ? Stimulated by your posting I've just been Googling around on this topic but couldn't find anything very specific. Lots of stuff about the Irish in the war but only very few references specifically relating to Clare.

If nothing exists already, once the membership of this forum has become substantial it might be interesting to do a roll-call on the forum and see how many Clare names come up.

Paddy

Paddy, I am very sorry that I missed seeing your question, although I do have my settings made so that I receive an alert about replies to any postings I make. However, no harm done as, to my knowledge, there is no list on-or-offline in which soldiers and sailors are identified as to a Clare origin. Even if there were an attempt made to collect such data from pension files (which is the only way to systematically obtain a place of origin), our experience has been that Clare men living near the Limerick border and within a civil parish identified as Limerick, tend to be listed as from Limerick. Thus any Clare listing would be suspect as to its actual comprehensiveness.

For such listings for other counties, my memory says that I have seen
such attempts in the past - you might try Googling for any involving
Donegal since large numbers of Donegal immigrants tended to cluster in one area in the 1850s/60s, like the mining area of Pennsylvania.

BTW, there were huge numbers of Civil War soldiers - I think the number
of casualties on each side of the war was something like half a million.
Irish enlisted in large numbers, for the pay and for the money obtained by substituting for drafted men.

Good thought on this, but logistically very challenging.

Sharon C.