Category: Immigrant Service
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Finding Finns: Revealing the Untold Story of Finnish Mariners in the American Civil War
With the help of our Citizen Scientists, Civil War Bluejackets is setting out to reveal new insights into the life of the common U.S. sailor during the American Civil War. The project blog has already examined the experiences of some African American, Irish, British and native-born white American sailors- representatives of the groups who made…
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Civil War Bluejackets Workshop: The Irish Experience
Last week we joined the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany for our latest Bluejackets workshop. As well as explaining what the project is about and demonstrating how volunteers can use Zooniverse, the talk also explored what naval records can tell us about Irish immigrants- and shared some of their stories. The talk is now…
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Celebrating Thanksgiving on a Union Monitor
As Thanksgiving approaches, we wanted to take a look at how U.S. sailors during the American Civil War celebrated the holiday. Thanksgiving was an important day for immigrants as well as for native-born Americans during the Civil War, as it provided them with an opportunity to embrace one of the flagship dates in their new…
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Crew Correspondence: The Last Letter of Paymaster’s Steward Thomas Brown
One of the central aims of the Civil War Bluejackets Project is to facilitate the “linking” of Civil War sailor’s data across different record types. Perhaps the richest of all of those records are the pension files of naval dependents. They were claimed when a serving or pensioned sailor passed away. Within files relating to…
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Sheets from the Fleet: USS Argosy
“Sheets from the Fleet” is a new occasional series we will be running to highlight some of the Muster Sheets we are working on and the potential we are hoping to unlock with the Civil War Bluejackets Project. Each post/thread will see us pick a random muster sheet from a random U.S. vessel and explore…
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Memorial Day Stories 3: William Churchill, USS Tecumseh
For Memorial Day 2022 Civil War Bluejackets took to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share the stories of some of the men who lost their lives aboard USS Tecumseh at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1864. Covering the vessel and four of her crew, the stories were presented as threads, and are replicated on the blog for…
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Memorial Day Stories 2: George Chapman, USS Tecumseh
For Memorial Day 2022 Civil War Bluejackets took to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to share the stories of some of the men who lost their lives aboard USS Tecumseh at the Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1864. Covering the vessel and four of her crew, the stories were presented as threads, and are replicated on the blog for…
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USS Carondelet Spotlight: Nativity & Ethnicity on a Union Gunboat
In our first two posts on Civil War Bluejackets we focused on individuals, exploring what they can reveal about immigrant and African American service in the Union Navy. Another of our aims with the muster roll transcription project is to see what the wider data set can tell us, and what questions it might raise. One way…
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USS Carondelet Spotlight: Reconstructing Individual Lives-Irish Immigrant James Carey
Our first post on Civil War Bluejackets sought to demonstrate how the muster rolls allow for a detailed look at the often hard to reach experiences of formerly enslaved African Americans. They also provide a similar opportunity with working class European immigrants. Given that March marks Irish American Heritage Month in the United States, we decided to take a…
The Civil War Bluejackets Project 