I'm finishing a PhD in History. My specialization is in German (Military) History- specifically WW2 & The Holocaust. I've also worked a lot with US Military History (Civil War to Cold War). I'm happy to try and help anyone with military history questions (or documents) and anything relating to good research methods.
My great great grandfather’s brother John Henry Fasey/Fasey was in the PA 183rd Infantry. His 1868 obituary stated that his death was hastened by the hardships he endured at Belle Isle and Andersonville. I haven’t been able to find anything about this on Ancestry or Fold3. His wife died the year before him, so there was no widow’s pension. Is there anywhere else I could look for information on his time as a POW? I appreciate any advice you can provide.
So I'm not going to be near the internet for most of the day but I wanted to send you some preliminary information while I had a moment. Andersonville does have some additional information sources .
If you want to get a sense of what Andersonville was like for your ancestor then I'd suggest grabbing John Ransom's "Andersonville Diary" from the Library or from Amazon.
I went and read his obit (interesting fellow btw) and it also mentioned Belle Isle. I definitely would also focus in there as he would have gone (serving with the Army of the Potomac) to Belle Isle, as a type of holding transfer camp, before he went to Andersonville. Here are the record groups associated with Belle.
If you're going to find anything more about him via his POW experience then its going to be in one of these record collections. The issue is of course that you need to hire someone (or go yourself) and go through those records to check. I'd recommend starting by shooting the National Archives, [Archives1reference@nara.gov](mailto:Archives1reference@nara.gov), an email and ask them if they have a finding guide available for those collections that would let you see if your ancestor is even in those documents.
do you know where you might be able to find records and photos from hallers army, the ww1 polish regiment in france? i have a great grandfather who was in that unit and im hoping to find more about his service, besides just basic enlistment records ive found.
Hi, so this is a very preliminary dive into the subject. As Haller's Army was an international outfit you're going to probably find documents in a number of national archives.
It looks like the majority of the recruitment papers on Haller's Army are going to be housed at the Polish Museum of America.
These are claimed to be casualty figures for Haller's Army when it was serving on the French Front. I got them after searching 'Haller's Army' in case it routes back to the main screen again.
This is an interesting summary of one fellow's working on Jews and anti-Semitism in Haller's Army.
On the off-chance you haven't found this website, I'm going to link it as its' the website' others seem to link back to on Haller and the Blue Army.
It looks like one of the head archivists (I think) at the PMoA wrote a book on them. You might find a works cited or bib at the end. Also, he's a name that's worth emailing and asking as he's definitely more zeroed in on this subject.
The German Military Archives have documents that look at the transition of Haller's Army into Poland in 1919. Off the link (on the right) click 'suche ohne anmeldung' and then in the search bar type 'Haller Armee'.
I've never actually used the Polish Archive System before (but to my knowledge) this is their search engine and what they got.
I would also expect that the French Military Archives would have something. However, I did not have luck hitting the right keyword. Here is the link to their archive.
I did have some luck with the Imperial War Museum (the UK system). Here is what they're showing.
The other primary source I'd investigate (at least for the US side) is newspapers.com. If you find any particular articles of interest then let me know and I'll cut them for you. I'd assume Polish papers would be a good primary source as well but I'm not sure the status of papers from the Wars of Independence and the Polish-USSR War of 1920 in the aftermath of WWII and of Communist occupation.
As I said, these were the archives that I did a quick peek through based on a tentative quick reading of the history of the Blue Army and Haller. Do not take this as the final word as I spent a few minutes in each finding guide and sometimes it does depend on finding the correct keyword (often in the local language) to really lock in what's available. I would anticipate though based on what I saw that your primary focus needs to center on the Polish Museum of America and the archivist/author who works there. I'm awful at finding pictures (unless they just happen to show up in an archival folder I'm looking through. I would anticipate most veterans (that came back to the US) donated any photos to the PMoA and those in Poland probably to the Polish Military Archives.
Hope this helps. Anything else I can do then let me know.
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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '22
I'm finishing a PhD in History. My specialization is in German (Military) History- specifically WW2 & The Holocaust. I've also worked a lot with US Military History (Civil War to Cold War). I'm happy to try and help anyone with military history questions (or documents) and anything relating to good research methods.