Research can be fun, tedious, and rewarding all at once

“As the author’s research reveals the journey of his great-great-grandfather across Nash County and battlefields of the Civil War, Michael K. Brantley discovers that exploring the past reveals the explored but changes the explorer. A worthy literary effort!”

—Wade G. Dudley, author of Remembering North Carolina and Splintering the Wooden Wall

I was honored to get this quote from Dr. Wade G. Dudley, a noted historian and beloved history professor at East Carolina University. Dr. Dudley graciously agreed to be an early reviewer of Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate.

I had no idea what was ahead of me when I found an entry for Wright Stephen Batchelor in a book about North Carolina Regiments in the Civil War. I was just hoping to find some connections of my family history for a chapter in my first book, Memory Cards: Portraits from a Rural Journey.

I saw that he was just a private, but had a fairly long entry, including the fact that he escaped after being captured at Gettysburg. It was the beginning of a chase that lasted almost a decade.

I followed Wright Stephen Batchelor — who turned out to be my great-great-grandfather — over eastern North Carolina, through Virginia battlefields and across a wheat field at Gettysburg. There was a prison camp, and then he joined the Union army. And that was just part of his journey.

The most fun thing about the research was the most frustrating at times. Every answer I found brought with it two more questions. I could have continued another five years and still not gotten all the answers.

Thanks to libraries and librarians, I didn’t have to go it alone. The state archives in Raleigh is amazing. Newspapers.com is an incredible resource.

I’d encourage anyone who has an interest in the history of their family to start looking. You don’t have to wait for the quarantine to end to start, many resources are online. NCLive, available through many local libraries, has great resources, including newspapers.com. There is also Ancestry.com, which is a paid service, but has a free trial.

Braswell Library in Rocky Mount and Wilson County library have awesome genealogy/local history rooms, and the librarians there to guide a researcher through it. Both spaces are comfortable and I’ll warn that it’s easy to lose track of time.

You might be surprised what you find, good and bad. Dr. Dudley nailed it when he said “exploring the past reveals the explored but changes the explorer.”

Clark’s Regimental Histories are a good start for information on Confederate units. You can click here for more info.

North Carolina Troops: A Roster is available in many public libraries and gives great information on every Confederate soldier from the state.

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