There I was, face-to-face with the headstone at Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

'Cpl. James Harvey Bump, July 2, 1863, Co A 111th NY Inf.'

Until then, I had no idea that I had any family relations that were involved, much less fought and died in the American Civil War, even though I have been interested in this great conflict since being a young child.

I recalled how my grandfather had spread large sheets of paper on his living room floor, telling me the story of the Bump family. He told me then of Edouard Bompasse who arrived on the Fortune the year after the first Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and of how the family had spread out since the year of 1621 all across America. Perhaps I never asked, but I do not recall him telling of any of those who fought in the Civil War.

A thousand questions flooded my mind then: Who was James Harvey Bump? Were we directly related? How did he come here to fight for the New York 111th Infantry Regiment? Where was he from? Did he have brothers or cousins that fought with him here? What happened to them? Were there other relations that fought in the war? The list of inquiries went on and on...

I resolved then to find out about James Harvey Bump, and to trace him as best as I could to see how all this could have happened.

How Hard Can It Be?

Returning home, I threw my travel bags aside, turned on my faithful computer, launched my internet browser, and immediately began to search for the name, James Harvey Bump. As my family name is rather unique, I did not feel it would be too difficult to locate information about him or other relations.

However, this was not the case. I found a few home pages by several of the Bump Family, but was not able to specifically find James Harvey Bump anywhere on the internet using the normal browsers and search patterns.

Undaunted, I then visited several web site links that I had found most informative on the American Civil War in the past, while creating my own web sites or organizing our annual trips to Gettysburg. I continued to think how easy this should all be.

What followed was hours and hours of searching, following links to dead ends, enduring numerous 'pop' advertisements, and being pelted by the resultant emails from visiting those sites. At best, it is a most difficult maze that one must endure most of the time when doing this sort of research on the internet. I discovered that a lot of patience and endurance is needed. However, I found it most rewarding every time I found a record of another of my relations, and just a small portion of their stories.

It is hoped that the reader will benefit from my wanderings through this maze, my trials, and to further benefit from my errors in my search for my personal heritage, which is but a very small part in American Heritage.

The reader should also be aware that these suggested methods are based on personal experience, and that there may be other sorts of methods they find easier in some respects than what is presented here. If so, I wish you would let me know what they may be, as I have not yet nearly finished my journey through my ancestors' paths.

What are the Odds?

Records show that there were over three million total of both sides that were enlisted in the military during the period between 1860 and 1865. An additional few thousand had been enlisted in the decade preceding the conflict and continued their service throughout the war. The total population of the United States at the time prior to the war was estimated to be about 30 million people, again for both North and South. This was either four or five generations ago for most of us. This gives us a real rough average of about one out of ten being a soldier or sailor during that era.

If you can trace your ancestors to about 1830-40, either by birth or arrival in this country, then your average chances of finding an ancestor who served in the American Civil War to be about one in ten. This applies to either the South, who had about a ten million population with one million estimated serving, to the North with a twenty million population base with about two million serving, give or take a few thousand.

I did find an extreme case where I located a German immigrant who literally stepped off the boat in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in November, 1862, into the arms of recruiting officials who connected him with an individual who paid a bounty of $200 to the immigrant to take the draft for him. The immigrant was immediately mustered into the service, having received a promise to be paid by that individual, and was subsequently wounded as a member of the 111th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment at Culp's Hill during the battle of Gettysburg the next summer. Interesting that we found a letter later from the immigrant asking his wife to be sure and contact the individual in regards to his overdue payment of the bounty. This circumstance was indeed rare, but not altogether out of the question in regards to the tracing of the individual's family.