Hubby's Ancestors in the Civil War: Part 2 (Mayflower Connection)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower

In Part 1 of this series, I applied multiple criteria to screen for potential Civil War ancestors in my husband's family tree: (1) organizing male ancestors according to birthdate to identify those of military age in the 1860s, (2) eliminating men who died before the war and who were not in America at the time, and (3) prioritizing ancestors closer to the main tree.

This reduced the number of possible Civil War veterans to research from 71 men to 33 men.

Next, I peeked at the 1910 U.S. Census to see which ancestors said they were veterans--a clue, not definitive evidence. This gave me positive clues for a good number, but what about those not alive in 1910?

Quick-and-Dirty Search for Civil War Activities

For ancestors who died before the 1910 Census, I did a quick-and-dirty search on Ancestry. Did these men register for the Civil War draft? If so, did they actually serve?

Between checking the 1910 Census and my quick-and-dirty search, I reduced the number of possible Civil War veterans from 33 to 20 [correction: 21, now that I've identified Lemuel C. Wood, Jr. as a vet]. This list included great-great uncles, cousins of various types, and two men married to great-great-aunts.

Mayflower Connections 

Along the way to profiling my husband's Civil War veterans, I filled in many blanks on the family tree and looked at family connections to prioritize my research.

A name that made the initial list due to his birth year was Thomas F. Wood (1843-1925), my husband's 1st cousin, twice removed. He was born and died in the whaling center of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the son of Isaiah Wood and Mary T. White.

As I climbed Thomas's family tree, I saw that his grandfather Isaiah Wood was descended from Mayflower passenger Mary Norris and her husband, Thomas Cushman of the Fortune. Thomas's grandmother Harriet Taber was descended from Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke.

Having made these connections, I immediately determined that Thomas F. Wood was to be the focus of my first Civil War investigation. More in Part 3!