Private Lewis Simpson, Company K of the Eighty-ninth New York Volunteers.

This post is about some civil war relatives with a Steunenberg connection. As many of you know, my 90 years young mother is Brenda Steunenberg Richards; her mother/my grandmother was Frances Beardsley Wood Steunenberg, the daughter of Eva Beardsley Wood and granddaughter of Mary Jane Beardsley. Mary Jane was the sister of Lewis, Justus and George Simpson. So I believe that makes Eva my great grandmother, Mary Jane my great great grandmother and her three brothers my great grand uncles but I won't swear to it. Pictured: Frankie (standing) and Eva Beardsley circa 1875, children of Mary Jane & Theo Beardsley.

The family is fortunate, that like Anthony Lukas and Big Trouble, we have another book entitled Whither thou Goest by Patrick Simpson that traces the descendents of my grandmother Frances Steunenberg through the perils of the Civil War and the journey of Mary Jane and Theo Beardsley with their daughters Eva and Frankie from Well Bridge, New York across the plains by covered wagon, through the Bannock Indian War and to the promises of the West in Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

I have basically this same post on Footnote.com with some additional annotations and quotes from Civil War letters. After a trial use of Footnote, I decided to subscribe and hence found the Civil War pension records. Just click on the post title immediately below and check it out on Footnote along with other items I have found.

August 1862
Where: Fredericksburg, Virginia
Private Lewis Simpson, Company K of the Eighty-ninth New York Volunteers
"Dear Sister, . . . He [Stonewall Jackson] will wake up some morning to find his stonewall all gone to thunder and his soul singing rebel anthems with the Devil and his Angels in Hell. May God arrest him in his mad and reckless career and convert his guilty soul over to taking the oath of allegiance to our dear good old Uncle Sam before it will be everlasting too late for him to repent." (Letter from Lewis to sister Mary Jane Beardsley written on August 18, 1862 from the front lines near Fredericksburg, Virginia.) From Whither thou Goest by Patrick D. Simpson.

Photo above of Private Lewis Simpson from the collection of the Frazier Farmstead Museum.

The sister of Private Lewis was Mary Jane Beardsley to whom he wrote a number of interesting civil war period letters that are in the archives of the Frazier Farmstead Museum.




Civil War Pension records from Fold3.com.