Confederate Veterans Living in Michigan in 1894

While most think of the South as the place to find veterans of the Confederacy, it should shock no one that some veterans of the Confederacy moved away from the Southland in the post-war years. In fact, The graves of many Confederate survivors of that war can be found in almost every state in the Union, including right here in Michigan.

In 1894, the State of Michigan conducted a state census, and as a part of that effort, documented specific information regarding it's military veteran population. Efforts to obtain copies of the original 1894 documents have proven unsuccessful over the years (it is my understanding that those documents have been considered lost or missing), and the published census information that was released in 1896 does not list the names of Confederate veterans living in the state at the time the census was taken. While this is unfortunate, the published findings do contain some valuable information.

We start by reading in the summary that, as of June 1894, there were nearly 43,000 veterans of The War Between the States living in Michigan, and 148 of them were Confederate veterans. Out of that 148: 102 were natural born U.S. citizens & 46 were foreign born; 124 of them were listed as married, 12 as being widowed, 11 as single, and 1 was divorced; their ages ranged from 43 to 82, with 55.41 being the average age.

Continuing through the summary, we get to the most disappointing part... "The list contains only the names of U.S. soldiers of the civil war. Certain facts respecting Mexican soldiers, U.S. Marines, and Confederate soldiers residing in the State [on] June 1, 1894, are shown in the tables, but no lists of their names are published." Had those other groups of veterans not also been excluded, it would be easy in today's world of anti-Confederate lunacy to say that this was discrimination, but that was not the case.

Now lets move on to the tables, the first of those concerning Confederate veterans being Table 4. - The Confederate soldiers residing in the State on June 1, 1894, by ages.

 

The above table does not give us much information, but what it does is informs us of the age ranges we should be searching for in online genealogical databases. With the oldest CSA veteran living in Michigan at the time being around age 82, and the youngest being around 43, we can sort of "guess-timate" our searches of the 1900 Census, for instance, to be for men who were born between about 1810 through about 1852. While that doesn't necessarily limit the search radius much, it will help. Of course, in searching the 1900 Census for men living in the state in 1894, there is the likelihood that some of those men died off before 1900, and some may have moved away.

The next table breaks down the number of CSA veterans by county, and then other statistics.

Here you can see how many CSA veterans were living in each county, and how many per county were natural or foreign born, and the statistical breakdown of the marital status for veterans in each county. 

The question, of course, turns into, "What happened to them all?" As of this writing, I have located the graves of only 24 Confederate veterans here in our state. I have not yet verified where each of them lived in the 1900 census, but some died before that enumeration took place, and others died before the 1894 tally. It is entirely probable that many others died and were subsequently buried here prior to June 1894. Some of those who were counted in the 1894 state census may have moved away and died elsewhere, but likely not enough to account for the lack of Confederate graves found here thus far.

It is my hope that the information that I've provided here can help future research efforts in finding & documenting each Confederate veteran buried in Michigan. If anyone reading this knows of a Confederate veteran's grave in our state, we ask that you would leave the information in a comment below. It is our desire to document them all and to see that they all receive the honor that they deserve.

DEO VINDICE!

- Jonathan McCleese

Sergeant-at-Arms

Admiral Raphael Semmes Camp #1321

Army of Tennessee

Sons of Confederate Veterans