Published June 4, 2024
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyDuring a random scroll around Facebook the other day I had a group named Descendants of Andersonville Prison.
Attracting my attention was that DNA genealogist Blaine Bettinger, a Facebook Friend, was a member of that group.
I didn’t know whether Bettinger’s interest was academic or personal, so I reached out to him with that question, and his answer blew me away.
Yes, his interest was personal: “My third-great-grandfather was Andersonville prisoner Cpl. Remiro Spicer,” Bettinger replied.
He wondered if I was a descendant of an Andersonville prisoner, but both of my Civil War soldier ancestors (Amos Machmer and Jacob Manbeck) stayed out of the notorious Confederate POW camps, although neither survived long after the way due to various debilities from their service.
But Spicer, on the other hand, not only survived the horrors of Andersonville Prison in Georgia—where more than ten thousand men died—and had gone for eight days without food before being rescued by Union troops … he must have had an unparalleled toughness. He died in 1926, living long enough to attend a 50th anniversary reunion on the surviving prisoners in 1914.
Spicer had enlisted in the 24th New York Infantry Regiment soon after the beginning of the war, transferring to the 76th New York Infantry a couple of years later—just in time to be a part of that regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he suffered wounds that required eight months of hospital recovery time.
When Spicer returned to the war in May 1864, his first engagement was the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia, during which he was taken prisoner along with many others.
He arrived at Andersonville later that month and escaped in early 1865 when the Confederates were shuffling prisoners during the approach of General Sherman during his “March to the Sea.”
Bettinger noted that he has an important inheritance from Spicer. “I’ve found a piece of DNA I inherited from him. If one single thing happened differently, I wouldn’t have the piece of DNA and I wouldn’t be me.”
It’s particularly cool that Bettinger’s expertise has allowed him to find his exact genetic inheritance from Spicer, but I tend toward the more cosmic side of this thinking.
Whether it’s the possibility of dying in a malnourished prison camp—or passing, say, in a natural disaster or because of some sort of epidemic—our pedigrees truly rest of a multitude of people “going there but for the grace of the deity” instead of dying before they had a chance to become our ancestor.
In the third-great-grandparent level, that’s 64 ancestors who had to avoid dying too soon! And every generation further back in time is double that!
Each one of us is a weaving of many generations and yet it all hangs by each single thread!
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For Sale
The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
John Moore
6 months ago
Thanks James and great to hear your talks in Albany!
My many-times great uncle James Moore was wounded at 1st Fredericksburg battle and lay on the field for 3 days until the Confederates took him. He was brought to Libby Prison in Richmond but eventually was paroled. Not sure why, maybe they knew he would never carry a rifle again. He made his way back to Naval Hospital in Annapolis where he was treated for 3 months, then sent home to Johnstown Pa. Fifty years after his release, James penned a detailed account of his Civil War experience, creating an amazing connection from his days to mine.
John!