Shy, I thoroughly enjoyed every word you wrote; thank you so much for sharing this story. (you write so well!) I used to hear some of these stories from my dear FIL years back----he lied about his age so he could join the Army---- I think he was a strapping 16 year-old boy when he signed up. As you've written here, he also said the conditions for man and beast were horrific, but would only say so much, and then no more. I truly hope you will write more pieces; this was just rivoting. I can't tell you how many years (DECADES!) it's been since I've heard the word, "Darn!" used!!! I LOVED seeing it in your piece---it brought back a lot of memory-snippets! KJ PS---next time, don't type 'very long' next to your thread title---something so interestingly written was not long at all!

Work can be. Tell me about it. Took me a lifetime to grasp that it isn't worth it, unfortunately; I wish it were. Hobby? Obsession? What's the difference? I guess the difference - for me - is that, I spend too much money, way beyond our means, on plants (not only on roses) so gardening has become an obsession, not a hobby any more. Gardening and rose forums I am obsessed with despite the fact that I should not lift, carry heavy stuff or band a lot nor should I spend too much time sitting in front of the computer. Or, when I was in high school and got money from my parents for a pair of shoes I spent on a book instead. Hobby is, in my interpretation, that enriches your life or makes it more interesting but does not destroy your health or make you financially bankrupt.

If you visit Gettysburg, check out Devil's Den, Little Round Top, Pennsylvania Momument, and the Peace Light Memorial on the battlefield. You can also tour President Eisenhower's house and farm while you are there in Gettysburg. You get the tickets for the tour at the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center. Then a shuttle bus takes you to the farm. On the square of Gettysburg is the David Wills house. At that site, you can visit the bedroom where Lincoln stayed and wrote the Gettysburg Address. Check the Dobbin House while in town. This building is the oldest building in town. The Dobbin House Tavern is in the basement. The servers dress in period costume. The main floor is a restaurant. Another interesting place to see is the Shriver House on Baltimore Steet. The tour shows you what it was like to be a civilian in Gettysburg during the war. You get to visit all four floors of the house. This historic home is furnished the way it would have looked at the time of the war. The tour does a great job of showing how the war personally affected the Shriver family. The Adams County Historical Society at the Lutheran Theological Seminary has many interesting items from the Civil War. This is a gem that many tourists miss when they come to town. It is free. These are my favorite spots in Gettysburg. This post was edited by dmickey on Fri, Jan 4, 13 at 23:12

Ancestry just had a special. Go ahead and join when you are up to it but cancel as soon as your 14th day rolls around. In the meantime, after you've made a free account somewhere is the option to sign up for the free newsletter and I think it's a different box to check for specials. Read everything on the subscribe page so you don't miss it. They don't send a lot of mail and the newsletter is very worthwhile. There will probably be a 6 month world special for $99. If you don't need access to anything outside of the U.S. I would just go with a discovery subscription. I caution you about the ancestors who have been traced back to 1400. You will HAVE to do your own detective work to be sure you have the right people. You always start with yourself and work backwards. Finding one family with joe as the husband and mary as the wife and they have a boy jim and a girl sally is not going to be good enough. You have no idea how many people have those names, even in the same place. And the farther back you go, the harder it is because the census didn't require the name of everyone in the household until 1850. Before that it was head of household and hash marks in age and sex columns. It's not as easy as it looks on TV. I do want you to keep your enthusiasm but I don't want you to think this will be solved in a year or two. My cousins have elected me chief researcher because I'm more careful than they are. They run things by me that they've found for me to fact check. I'm trying not to put my arm out of joint patting myself on the back but I want you to go into this knowing it's going to be a lot of fun work! Get yourself some three ring binders at the Salvation Army or Goodwill. Next time Staples has a case of paper on sale, buy it. Get some cheap ink from Amazon.com. Print everything that you think fits most of the parameters of your search. It's a lot easier to print it now than find it again later. Citations. If you haven't heard it yet, you will. I didn't do it when I started because I was "only" going to look up my grandmother on my dad's side. Well, let me give you the best piece of advice I can think of. When you save something, make sure you write on it where you found it and everything else so that if you were to look for it the next month you would be able to pull that sheet out and know exactly where you found that information. After I got serious I had to go back and do it all over again. Not fun! Second thing, and you could do this now, subscribe to some genealogy blogs. There are so many you will find a few you like. You probably won't understand what they're talking about until you do some research yourself but in a short while you will. And they know where the other resources are. Ancestry has a youtube channel full of tutorials. Go there and watch a few. Have your eyes glazed over? It happens to everyone I talk to!!