Sunday 16 August 2009

A Veteran of the Civil War

John F Blum is my late husbands’ Great Grandfather. He lost his arm in the Civil war while a teenager, met and married his wife Hulda, in his thirties, and fathered 10 children, of which 7 lived to adulthood. He was born in Pennsylvania, of German parents, brought up his family in Big Stone, Akron, Minnesota, where he farmed for a living and then around 1895/6 he moved to Fitzgerald, Georgia.




Fitzgerald was the dream of P H Fitzgerald, who created it in 1895, in the main part, as a community for Civil War Veterans who had suffered the devastation of the Midwest during the early 1890’s. This destruction of the area was due to drought, rendering a once fertile farming area into dusty wasteland. The situation was made even worse by the depression that spreading over the country as a whole. The desire for a new start was so great, that people moved themselves and their families, by any means available to them, into the area, even before surveys of the land had been carried out. The first year was very hard and it is believed that John and his family were in at the start of it all.

4 comments:

Morning's Minion said...

Angie,
I enjoy reading other's bits of family history and the photos so nicely presented add a great deal. I don't know if the Ken Burn's Civil War Documentary was shown in UK--he used old photos and narratives very skillfully. My husband and I watched it several times over a course of years. Sometime when I'm feeling rich I shall buy the set of DVD's.
Here is the link in case you're not familiar with it.
http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/

Unknown said...

more interesting bits of history-I'm wondering how the american and UK families got together

Kit said...

Great pages Angie

Dan said...

I love how the tone and mood of your pages is such a great fit with the subject matter - not always easy to get right and you seem to do it page after page! :)