Category: Archive

Andrew Jackson Wanzer

Andrew Jackson Wanzer (1873-1889) is my great-great-grandfather. He was born on July 16, 1837, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He married Malvina Abigail Chase on April 12, 1858, and they began a family. Their first child, Nettie, was premature and died at birth in the winter of 1858. They would go on to have seven more children: George Alvin (1862-1915), Edward Benjamin (1864-1944), Frank Marion (1867-1941), James C. (1869-1928), Olive Jeannette (1872-1872), Hattie B. (1877-1911), and Mortimer Leroy (1878-1947), Mortimer is my great-grandfather. Andrew Jackson Wanzer died on December 29, 1889, in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he is buried.

AT REST – A.J. WANZER – July 16, 1837 – Dec. 29 1889 – Co. G. 5. Wis. – Vol.

“Jack” is somewhat enigmatic in that the Wanzer branch ends with him. Malvina, or “Vine,” on the other hand, her line goes back to the early 1700s on her mother’s side (Mason), and her father’s side (Chase) goes back to the mid-1600s in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Chase patrilineal line from Malvina goes back seven more generations to Thomas Chase (1592-1627) in Suffolk, England.

The Wanzer line is where I will be focusing my research. The Wanzer name is a derivation of the WANSHAER. Any Wanzer, or other derivation in America before 1920, are descended from Jan Jansen Wanshaer “the first and only person to come to America, by that name, reached New Amsterdam … about 1642…”1 Jan is believed to have been born in 1621 in Cadzand, Holland in the Dutch province of Zeeland.

What we know of “Jack” is mostly from his Union Army service record. He was a lumberman in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, 5′ 7 3/4″, dark eyes, black hair, and a dark complexion. We also have a brief history of his unit the Wisconsin 5th Infantry and Company G2. During his service, he wrote at least four letters to “Vina” that have been kept in the family.

  • Enlisted August 29, 1864, Albion, WI.
  • Mustered In September 13, 1864, Madison WI
    Wisconsin 5th Infantry Company G
  • Between October and November 1864, he made Corporal
  • Letter 1 December 27, 1864, Parks Station, VA
  • Letter 2 March 21, 1865, Warnes Station, VA
    The unit is camped just northwest of Appomattox
  • Lee Surrenders April 6, 1865, Appomattox, VA
  • Letter 3 April 17, 1865, Berk Station, VA
  • Letter 4 April 29, 1865, Danvill, VA
  • Mustered Out June 20, 1865, Hall’s Hill, VA
    What is now High View Park, Arlington, VA

The two letters below in the appendix are from Jack to Vina, dated March 21 and April 17, 1865, respectively.3, 4 They are of interest in part because they frame Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 6, 1865. Jack’s unit was camped near Appomattox, and he mentions their being at the surrender after participating in the capture of Petersburg.

Appendix

The letter scans are of both sides of a folded letter so the page layout is the left image, 4 | 1, and the right 2 | 3. The transcriptions below the scans are as the letters were written, with no corrections. The forward slash (/) indicates a new line. Anything between straight brackets ([ ]) was not clear in the scan and presumed correct.

Letter 2 – March 21, 1865

Page 1
March the 21st, 1865 / [?] Warnes Station VA / My dear wife I take my / pen in hand to let you / know that I am well at / this time I have wrot 4 / or five letters to you in / the last 6 or 7 days but I / thought that I would / be on a march be fore this / time but that dont make / much difference I will / right you one to day and / I will send you the / receipt for forty dollars / that I have sent to you / by express I have sent all / of the recipts to you for / the money that I have / sent to you and I have / sent [?] you 2 shirts and / one blanket I sent them / in a box with L T Johnson

Page 2
and we Directed it to / James Davidson I have / wrote to you all a bout / it in my other letters I / dont know how soon we / will have to march from / here our orders is Just the / same that they was when / I wrote my last one to / you it is warm As / summer here the grass is / green here and every thing / is pleasent I think that / this cruel war Cannot / last much longer for / our army is getting the / Johneys is getting in clost / quartersand thay ar getting / beat in every fight that / is faught Shearman and / Sheridan is playing them / the duce and our army

Page 3
is holding the Johneys / tight so they have to stay / here so that thay Cannot / reinforse one another so I / think that the Johneys / will have to surrender / be fore 2 months from / this time I dont see any / chance for the Johneys at / all I must close for this / time I would Just say that / our Captin has left and we / dont cry a bout it I think / that oald Squires will / be discharged from this / company be fore long he is / under a coart martial / this day all of our company / is well and looks fine / I will close for this time / right often and dont forget / this from your Jack Wanzer / to vine

Letter 3 – April 17, 1865

Page 1
Berks Station / April the 17th 1865 VA / My dear wife I take this time to / let you know that I am well / and have got to my company / all right I found them / encamped in the pine woods / and we ar a bout 52 miles / from peters burgh our regiment / was at the surrender of general / lees army and after the surrender / they marched to where we ar / and we dont know how long / we will stay here but one / thing is sure that this war / is a bout to a close all of / the boyes is in good health / and feels fine we think that / we will be at home by the / 4th of July and I dont see / any thing in the way at / this time the weather is / warm here and pleasent

Page 2
Our regiment has been in / thre fights since I was at / home our regiment has lost / 2 hundred men our company/ lost 26 men in killed and / wounded James Conlin was / killed dead on the field / and Samuel Virnow was / wounded bad and the boyes / thinks that he is dead but / we dont know surtin all of / the boys went in to the fight / that was from our town but / Noah A Decker and he runn / a way and we dont know ware / he is he is one coward from / Blackriver falls Oald quires was / shot in the stearn and he / has 5 holes tht will tell which / way he was going I have knot / got much news to right / at this time but we think

Page 3
that our boyes will go to / Washington in a short time / our boyes is got the praise of / the capture of peters burgh / and our regiment was the / first in to the Johneys / fort our boys from wisconsin / is Just the boyes that can / Climb the brest work our / regiment had a hard a hard fight / with general Euiels men at / litle salor creek and thay / helped to capture 10,000 prisoner / Samul kinnion and cooper / got back to ther regimen / all right I must close / for this time Our boyes has / been excused from all / field duty for our bravery / I will put this confedeate / bill in this letter to let / you see it right as soon as

Page 4
get this I hope you / ar well good By / This from your / A J Wanzer / To his wife Vine wanzer / I got a letter from my / sister Ann since I / got Back here / you can write to ann / and tell her what I want / Just as well as I can

  1. William David Wanzer, History of the Wanzer Family in America, from the Settelment in New Amsterdam, New York, 1642-1920, Medford, MA: Medford Mercury Press, 1920. ↩︎
  2. E.B. Quiner, The Military History of Wisconsin: A Record of the Civil and Military Patriotism of the State, in the War for the Union, With a History of the Campaigns in Which Wisconsin Soldiers Have Been Conspicuous – Regimental Histories – Sketches of Distinguished Officers – The Role of the Illustrious Dead – Movements of the Legislature and State Officers, Etc., Chicago, IL: Clarke & Company, 1866. ↩︎
  3. Andrew Jackson Wanzer to Malvina Abigail Chase Wanzer, March 21, 1865, Jonathan Wanzer Family Genealogy Collection, Klamath Falls, OR.) ↩︎
  4. Andrew Jackson Wanzer to Malvina Abigail Chase Wanzer, April 17, 1865, Jonathan Wanzer Family Genealogy Collection, Klamath Falls, OR. ↩︎

Pilot Project and More

The intention was to post last month but the workload for school has been heavier than expected. The pilot project included in the last post, building an organization’s media archive has been going well. One of the first determinations was that Omeka would not be the platform solution for the project. Omeka is a fine platform, but it is too complex for the organizations environment, personnel, the single media type, and the minimal metadata needs. In this case a simpler PHP/HTML front end for a small database will be more effective and easier to train the organization’s staff on if they decide to continue with the project after the pilot program is completed in December. As of today, the server is built, the platform software (a Linux system with Apache, MariaDB, and PHP [a LAMP server]) is installed, now it’s time to work on the database tables and a simple front end. This will likely be the main daily activity well into October.

In the Local History / Public History class, the next assignment is to analyze an occupation in the field/sub-field of interest, paper conservation was the choice I made as this is an area of great interest to me. Without any local practitioners or local educational resources the decision was made to dive in with a survey of practitioners. The survey is very narrow demographically and geographically, as well as being specific to paper conservation for books and documents, it is limited to the New England area. I would like to relocate to Maine in the near future so the geographic location made sense. Due to the narrow confines imposed, there was a total pool of 115 practitioners invited. As of this writing, there have been 16 respondents, 13.9%, which is pretty good. The hope is to have as close as possible to a 30% response which is asking a lot. Anyone having done a survey by cold-emailing professionals in a field knows anything above 10% is a good response. There are a few more days before the paper needs to be written so we shall see how close I get. The survey has 5 demographic questions and 5 questions on the education of new candidates to the field. SurveyMonkey was used because I have used that tool in the past. The results that have come in have provided an idea for a more detailed research project, an expanded version of this paper, that could make for an interesting journal article. SurveyMonkey is out of the question for an expanded research project, however, they have gotten far more expensive than is practical. Poking around a bit, I found a survey platform that can be added to an existing website and was easy to install and get started. The platform still needs to be explored and learned. This platform could make conducting survey research in a way that fits my workflow and reduces time to process and publish without spending a lot of money for what should be basic feature sets much easier.

Including the two projects above, a collection management system and a research project on paper conservators, there is also a documentary edition project that may move forward. On a recent visit to the local museum, while talking with one of the collections staff about another project for class, they brought up a journal they saw in one of the archive spaces that sounded like it would make a good candidate for a documentary edition for publication. An interest in pursuing this project has been expressed, as of yet no response, however, an in-person follow up will be forthcoming as this would be an enjoyable project and a solid CV / portfolio builder.

Until next time,
~Jon

Edited 21 SEP 2024

New Projects

An upcoming school project is providing the impetus to begin another, bigger, long-term project, the archive. My last post expounded on the great expanse of cataloging and what all is involved in the data management and location side of establishing an accessible archive. I already have an archive per se, a collection of photos, documents, papers, letters, and a handful of artifacts, the issue is it is little more than boxes of stuff, not the searchable and accessible collection it should be. As the previous post indicated the metadata captured and the form it takes provides the searchable elements of the catalog. This is where the old computer axium, garbage in – garbage out, stands very true. Bad use of, or poor, non-standard quality metadata is worse than none at all.

There will be more on the school project in future posts, suffice it to say at this point it is a pilot project to define the standards for a permanent digital media archive comprised of digitised magnetic analog media. The goal is to establish the background policies and procedures for an entity to build a media archive from old magnetic media before it degrades to the point it can no longer be accessed and to make the created digital media searchable and accessible. Searchable and accessible being the key operators, hence the need for a thorough look at what metadata will be useful, and to what level should the metadata be standardized to easily integrate with other institutions in a shared environment.

While my own archive has been nagging at the back of my mind for years, having a project along similar lines for a graduate project helps breaks the rust of apathy and stagnation. The project is under the auspices of an internship that will span two sub-terms, from mid-August to mid-December, and will be a pilot project that is primarily an investigation of what would be required to establish an archive. While I will be digitizing some media for the project, the primary objective is to gather data for a thorough report that will outline the policies and procedures for starting and maintaining a permanent archive along with the projected cost of maintaining it. I am hopeful that the my report from the pilot project will result in a decision by the organization to take on the full archive, but even if they chose not to, I will have set out to build a working archive and have the pilot project to show for it as well as the skills to continue with my own archive.

One of my biggest questions was were to build the archive website. I am running a testbed on and internet accessible server to learn the platform I have chosen to build the archive on, but I wanted to build the pilot project on an internal machine, something not hosted by a provider to allow for complete control and an opportunity to try and break it. I decided to run the pilot on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of memory and a 1TB SSD. I am familiar with running servers on the Pi platform and keeping them secure in a production environment which will help reduce IT needs. I have an isolated sandbox and can tunnel into the server which reduces the organizational expense to all but naut. I am used to taking on the IT/IS responsibilities for projects of this scale so this was a no brainer. In the runup to the project’s start date I am working on familiarizing myself with the inner workings of the Omeka platform and how it handles the metadata and customization.

That’s all for now,
~Jon