Dead Ends and Dead Links

In preparation for next month's program at the Dorcheat Historical Association's Night for the Museum, I've been playing with Civil War topics. The Civil War is a "lost love" of sorts for me. I actually taught myself to read as a child reading about the war during those days of the Civil War Centennial celebration. However, as I tell my students, I probably knew more about the war at age 10 than I do today. My interests shifted to the 20th Century South and the Civil Rights Era and my knowledge of the Civil War years didn't keep up and as I get older I forget things I once knew.

Going back to that research reminded me of so many nagging questions and the realization that many answers are truly "gone with the wind." This morning, as I was preparing to teach the first part of Reconstruction to my Louisiana History classes, I decided to see if anything "new" had popped up on the Internet about the troops that occupied Shreveport, Minden and Northwest Louisiana at the close of the war, beginning  in late May 1865.  Sadly, what I found was no new sources and one very good source that had disappeared.

To make a long story short -- which is something I am VERY poor at doing -- our area was occupied by the 61st United States Colored Troops commanded by Lt. Col. John Foley of Illinois.  The detachment of troops in Minden, most likely Company I of the 61st, were commanded by Capt. Charles Graff, also of Illinois, who had been a Sgt. serving under Foley, when Foley was a Major in the Illinois Infantry. When Foley was offered the command of the 61st he brought Graff along and steered him to an officer's commission.

The troops arrived in Minden during the last week of May 1865 and remained until December of that year. Based on local tradition and the few written accounts that survived it was an interesting time. The black troops were camped along the area surrounding the Berry Plantation, basically the north side of the first couple of blocks of the Homer Road. There were clashes between the local residents and the black troops, at least two trials of white citizens for insulting black soldiers and two court martials of black soldiers for disturbances among the troops took place. In the end, some of the black troops, most notably Private Eli Bobo, remained in Minden. (Bobo became a Minden town Alderman in the 1870s.)

The historical record of those times has always been sketchy at best. The regimental histories of the 61st actually don't show the unit ever coming to Northwest Louisiana, yet I have in hand court martial papers that prove that as local accounts indicated, the 61st did occupy our area. Lt. Col. Foley moved to Kansas after the war and died before reaching the age of 50, never writing about his time in North Louisiana. Graff went to Little Rock after the war and was killed in his early 30s. A few years back when I last checked, there was a wonderful web site established by a researcher who was descended from Eli Bobo's sister. He had so much history about his ancestor's (and Eli's) journey from slavery to freedom. This morning when I checked, the web site is gone. I do have the researcher's e-mail address on my home computer, so I can be in touch. But, once again, I am so frustrated in seeing our history being lost or untraceable.

Bringing me back to my recurrent theme in this blog. Please, write down what you know and let it be saved for future generations.

UPDATE: The web page I mentioned about the family of Eli Bobo's sister has not disappeared. Mr. Collier, the researcher, merely finished his book and relocated his website under a new URL that reflected the name of his book.

http://www.mississippitoafrica.com/blackrootsseeker/