Diary of the Acceptance of Point Lookout Civil War Prison Project

A diary of the acceptance & management of Point Lookout Civil War Prison Project, what steps I took, what emotions were generated, what connections I made & what Truths I found out & how I felt about them. Brunson-1754 03:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

6:30 PM CDT - 20JUL23 I joined some War_and_Military groups because I believe in Standing Up for your beliefs. I wanted to honor those that went to war by finding & telling their stories. There is no better way to show how you stand than going to war; any war. Some of those who participate in war go in under their Personal & Patriotic beliefs & feel especially strongly about why they go in. They take their Codes of Conduct with them in that they expect to be treated at least as a human being by those they are fighting.

I chose to go further down into the men in my family who went to war & joined the War_Between_the_States Group in order to help others while I was working on my own projects. And here is why I chose to join those groups. As I was working the Connect_A_Thon, I connected my family; only my family for a total of 164 connections. No matter how you look at it, that is a lot of people! When you look at in terms of family, it's called prolific!

I started noticing a pattern pretty soon into the data. I would say 88 - 92% of the men of the generation that was old enough, maybe, to participate in the Civil War, did so as a matter of Honor, Pride, Patriotism & Resolve. I say that because I know how my family, as a very broad whole, thinks. And I get that there would be family members that don't think or feel that way. I found those too, the outliers; the ones that had nothing about them data-wise or verbal information in connection connection to their Memorials. And in my family, telling family stories is a daily part of life to the point that people we have never even met know your embarrassing life-hood incidents. Not only do the spiel the embarrassing stuff, they also spiel the negative stuff judging as well; another prolific inherited family trait. Unless you've been cut. Then they won't talk about you at all.

Since the outliers had family connections but no mention of any negativity towards or participation in the war, they must have kept their heads down & just lived. As yet, I have found no Union soldiers or sympathizers connected to any of the non-combatants. And if they had been there, they would have already be found. I know this because my family talks, a lot, about news of missing family members, Remember, prolific, 167 connections & that was only 2 direct lines.

I just connected with a second cousin because of WT because of citation coverage from sources for images in public domain. I sent her the 1st message asking for permission to use "The Last Goodby" from our (unbeknownst to me at the time) cousin so I could create a memorial for him. She is far enough & long enough away from him in time (maybe she was born by this time) that she needed clarification on about the Memorial she Managed, told me about her relative pilot of the Memorials she Managed that was a WWll wasn't shot down, but rather died when he crashed into another plane on a training mission in the Gulf of Mexico. Then, Oh, SNAP!, I have Brunson's in my family tree also. Are your Brunson's in OK or AR?

I wrote her back & explained who I was, what our connection was, what the connection to knowns to her was & clarified again what I wanted; permission to use the image, "The Last Goodbye." and went into detail explaining that I was creating a Virtual Memorial for Francis Brunson & the crew of the "Spook lll" that was believed to have been shot down by German fire & went down somewhere in the North Sea & Presumed Lost. I wanted images of these men so I could flesh out their stories & help bring them to Life.

Later that same day she wrote back: "Howdy Pat" was her salutation as I had given her my bonifieds; early day 1. Later in the day, "Dear Pat, Hello Cuz! Frank & Sallie are my great grandparents also." because I had sent her a more detailed message

Day 2, she sent me a short message letting me know about OK newspaper clippings on line at the Bryan County Genealogy Library and Archives, told her will check it out. I let the WT know about that.

First thing next morning, day 3, I open up a message from P. & it was a family photo circa 1933 with a lot of people in it; you remember that prolific thing I was talking about? Here it is.

Brunson-1754 05:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC) I ran out of steam here @ 12:13am, 21JUL23 Brunson-1754 05:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)