MovieChat Forums > Cold Mountain (2003) Discussion > Have Been Doing Genealogy with Same Time...

Have Been Doing Genealogy with Same Time Period and Movie Hit Me Hard

posted 11 years ago by rulamarr
3 replies | jump to latest

I enjoyed the movie despite the number of English/Australian actors performing as Southerner. I had ancestors on both sides of the conflict and some just disappeared from history. I'm still trying to find them in the Civil War Death Rolls. Neither side were gentlemen in the conflict and both sides had no clue what war really was. Many sat at their grandpa's knees listening to stories of the War of 1812, and thought it was all glory. I have a photo hanging on the wall of my Great-Great Grandfather with his Nephew. He's wearing a Civil War Naval Officers Uniform and his nephew is wearing a WWI Doughboy uniform; the problem is, my grandfather was never more than a common seaman during the Civil War and the family has been wondering where the uniform came from.

[–] ClassicMovieholic 11 years ago

My family also had people on both sides of the conflict. The Southern side included some gentlemen and planters, but also yeoman and backwoodsman. Interesting stuff, genealogy. The earliest portrait photographs I've seen in the family collection probably date back to the 1870s or 1880s, but nothing quite as old as the Civil War.

[–] rulamarr 11 years ago

We have an old tintype that we have no idea who the person is from that era. My great-grandad and cousin's photo was taken just after WWI. rul

[–] ClassicMovieholic 11 years ago

We have some great photos from the turn of the century through 1950s including one of my great grandfather in WWI uniform, but not too much nineteenth-century, sadly, as portraiture is one of my passions. Based on what I know of my family's holdings in the antebellum period, I can only imagine we had not only tintypes, but perhaps also a few fine portraits in oil at some point. Who knows what happened to them. Lost to Yankee raiders or Yankee torches? Sold to pay off mounting debts? Discarded by indifferent descendants? No way of telling what happened to the fine art which belonged to the gentlefolk among my ancestors. But the stories last for generations.