Uncovering Delaware’s Civil War Sailors
One of the major goals of Civil War Bluejackets is to facilitate and encourage increased public engagement with the records of the wartime navy. The Delaware Genealogical Society and Delaware African American Genealogical Society have partnered with the project in order to explore that future potential, taking as a case study sailors from the state of Delaware. Their work has revealed a host of new information about sailors with Delaware links. It has also highlighted some of the ways in which other groups may be able to utilise the transcribed muster roll data in the future. To provide Civil War Bluejackets readers with some insight into the fruits of their efforts, DGS President Ken Finlayson has kindly allowed us to reproduce the society’s September 2023 progress report on the site- you can read it in full below.
Delaware Genealogical Society – Delaware African American Genealogical Society
Bluejacket Research Project
Kenneth J Finlayson, President, DGS
Background
The Delaware Genealogical Society (DGS) and the Delaware African American Historical and Genealogical Society (DEAAHGS) have partnered with the Bluejacket Project, an Arts and Humanities Research Council UK-funded project managed by historians at Northumbria University and the University of Sheffield UK.
The project’s full title is Civil War Bluejackets: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the United States Navy, 1861-1865.
The primary goal of the Bluejacket project is to transcribe and produce publicly available data on digitized Civil War sailor ship muster roll records that will provide service record data on 118,000 Navy service members. This data will be a resource for further research and discovery of the experience of both African American and immigrant sailors and their interactions with other servicemen.
Zooniverse, the world’s largest and most popular volunteer-powered research platform, manages the record transcription process. This project has over 1,000 volunteers transcribing the digitized data drawn from the National Archives muster rolls of the Civil War vessels.
The Bluejacket project will run until February 2025. The project seeks to link the primary digitized data to other wartime records such as enlistment, pension, and other wartime data to create a Civil War Sailor Internet Resource.
The Bluejacket Project partnered with DGS and DAAHGS to focus first on genealogical research on African-American sailors who enlisted as native-born Delawareans.
The local research project also aims to produce biographies documenting the history of the post-war working-class lives of African-American and Irish sailors who spent years working and living together in confined and unhealthy wartime conditions aboard the U.S. Navy vessel the USS Juniata. The objective is to identify post-war biographical variables that may inform specific reliable group comparisons not present in the military records.
The Project to Date
The Delaware Genealogical Society and Delaware African American Historical and Genealogical Society have completed the primary data collection of native Delaware African-American Civil War sailors. The data sources were the National Park Service (NPS) Sailor’s Database and Ancestry’s U.S. African-American Civil War Sailor Index, 1861-1865. (1)
We have 1,558 muster dates assembled on 341 sailors assigned to 209 ships. We also collected, as value-added data, the names of African-American sailors from surrounding counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. There are 61 Pennsylvania, 33 New Jersey, and 166 Maryland sailor’s data in these counties sequestered in case we need to review regional data. (2)
Volunteers sorted the data collection format according to each sailor’s muster date. The sort produced a chronological list of musters with the specific vessels displaying an easily identifiable service configuration. This confirmed a general pattern of sailors staying with the same vessel once permanently deployed. It also exposed duplicate muster rolls related to vessel transfers. When a sailor had transferred to a new ship, the previous vessel many times erroneously repeated the transferred sailor’s name in their next muster roll. This error made it appear in the unsorted NPS muster rolls that the sailor had transferred back to their previous vessel when they had not done so.
Sorting by enlistment date revealed 11 Delaware African-American Civil War sailors who enlisted before the Civil War. The earliest initial enlistment was in 1848. A review found that the Navy universally rated African-American sailors with standard Landsman and Ordinary Seaman ratings. A complete manual browse of the U.S. Naval Enlistment Rendezvous, 1855-1891 records up to 1860 documented 18 Delaware-born African-American sailors, many of whom reported mariner occupations and all given standard Navy ratings.
We also reviewed rendezvous data in eleven centers (24 enlistment places). New York and Philadelphia were the primary enlistment centers during the War, with 112 and 159 Delaware African-American enlistments, respectively. We initially speculated that those who enlisted in the smaller centers were residents of those locations. A random survey, however, does not support that hypothesis. Instead, post-war residency appears widely dispersed. In addition, Philadelphia and New York, the major centers, also lack reliable patterns despite the temptation to assume they are employment magnets and, therefore, sailors’ local residences. We discontinued further analysis pending our upcoming research that would provide more reliable results.
On the criteria “Occupation” (before enlistment) in Philadelphia, of all 152 Delaware-born enlistees there, 16 (10.5%) reported their occupation as a mariner, and 9 of those 16 (56%) received the rating of Seaman or above. New York produced similar ratios. However, a closer review of New York and Philadelphia data provides clarity. For example, of the 112 who enlisted in New York, nine sailors received ratings of Ordinary Seaman or Seaman. However, only four received the higher rating at enlistment. The Navy either promoted the other five to a higher rank later or, more likely, the higher rating resulted from reenlistment, revealing the risk of only using the enlistment data in muster rolls to determine rating analysis.
With a focus on more detailed research, DGS transcribed and documented all the sailors on the USS Juniata in the muster roll of 16 July 1864. Of the 209 ships, this vessel had the most native-born Delawareans on their muster roll.
The total roster is 161 sailors, confirmed by the ship’s roster summary. In addition, there are 11 Delaware African-American sailors, 15 other African-American sailors, 29 Irish sailors, 41 European sailors, and 65 sailors one could call ‘fair complexioned’ U.S. sailors.
The USS Juniata became part of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron at Hampton Roads and was involved in the intense offensive operations of the first and second attacks on Fort Fisher, North Carolina, in December 1864 and January 1865.
Project Update
The project now has all the muster roll data on the 161 sailors on the USS Juniata on 16 July 1864.
Ten native-born Delaware African-American sailors served on the Juniata. (3) Sixteen other African-American sailors were born elsewhere, totaling 26 African Americans. The Irish were also represented. There were 28 native-born Irish sailors serving on the Juniata. They listed Pennsylvania and New York as a pre-enlistment residence.
African-American Native-Born Sailor Biographies
DGS has completed biographical information on all ten native-born African-American sailors. An extensive amount of time was spent developing a uniform Excel data collection form that was reliable, supported a written biography, and listed consistent variables that could be analyzed. Here is a sample form on Landsman James H. Price, born in Wilmington, Delaware (click to enlarge).
The ten sailor biographies were completed, separately edited, and corrected. The form was continuously re-designed. The form was then ‘dry-run’ by a volunteer with no program knowledge. This provided valuable feedback on the contents of the Field Guide to be used by future volunteers. Mark Weinberg and Herb Thompson provided valuable work with this research.
Note on the form that all data events were listed chronologically. This provides a clear biographical sequence that allows easy-to-review relationships to age, marriage, service, children, and other post-service events. Records are hyperlinked to each biographical event for instant reference. This includes USS Juniata muster rolls and specific pension pages. Excel allows fluid movement of data rows that can be added as found and easily moved chronologically.
Age data are calculated from a confirmed record(s) to establish an accurate birth year. Because many records like census and enlistment are typically within a range, records such as death and pensions were used to establish the most reliable birth year. This birth year was then used to attach an actual age to each chronological event.
Census data for 1850, 1860, and 1870 is automatically listed to allow a “no record” documentation.
The biographies of the ten USS Juniata native-born Delaware African-American sailors presented some preliminary comparisons among those sailors. A master data form was developed to capture potential variables.
Seven of the ten sailors were married; three were married prior to service. Five married sailors had children. Only two sailors had a war injury, both minor. Only four could be found in the 1850 census, five in the 1860 census, and eight in the 1870 census. Only three sailors lived past the age of 50. All three were married and had children. Three had living descendants. James H. Price had living descendants, and DGS found and corresponded with them. Only three sailors showed a record of the name of a parent.
There appear to be correlations between the lack of early census records and the ability to identify a parent, age at death, as well as marriage and children. This will be researched after all the data is available.
The Next Phase of Research
The goal of the next phase of research is to complete biographies on the 16 non-Delaware African-American sailors and the 29 Irish-born sailors for a total of 45 new biographies. This will provide biographies of all 26 African-American and 29 Irish sailors who served on the USS Juniata. When complete, the data will allow a comprehensive analysis of two distinct cultures of sailors on the same vessel.
Completing this phase will require around ten new volunteers to complete the work in a reasonable time. Before volunteer outreach, the existing Field Guide requires editing to incorporate the changes learned with the ten completed biographies.
This upcoming phase of the research requires the following:
- Editing of the Field Guide
- Outreach to potential volunteers with research experience and access to Ancestry/FamilySearch and Fold3 databases
- Distribution of the data form and field guide to volunteers
- A comprehensive Zoom training event with volunteers
- Editing of each of the 45 new biographies
- Transfer of the specific variable data to a master database
- Analysis of the master data
- Completion of a report
Damian Shiels, a Bluejacket project manager at the UK Northumberland University, is willing to provide a Zoom Bluejacket project summary and update to all volunteers. The Zoom training will take more than one session. Following the first general session, future sessions will probably be more of a Q & A format with interesting story examples of individual sailor biographies.
Program Potential
Sometime in 2025, the Bluejacket project will have all the muster data on all 118,000 United States sailors serving during the Civil War available to the public. Almost everyone interested in this database will want to know how to use this new information to compile a history of their ancestors.
DGS and all the volunteers will have already gone through the complete research methodology, have all the data sources, have the best forms for compiling the data, and practice on several sailor-edited biographies before the project results are complete.
In addition, if feasible, Damian Shiels has agreed to have the Bluejacket Project join with DGS in issuing a certificate of completion for all volunteers who complete sailor biographies.
Notes
(1) The National Parks Service (NPS) data shows eleven sailors; however, after extensive genealogical research, one sailor was confirmed to be white.
(2) The NPS is the primary source. NPS derived the data from Howard University’s transcriptions of digitized enlistment and quarterly muster rolls of Navy vessels. Ancestry uses this data in their index.
(3) This data from counties adjoining Delaware are filtered from downloaded complete state lists of African-American sailors.
The Civil War Bluejackets Project 