Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Working on Wednesday: Vandy Marcellus Neal (1838 - 1905) Doctor, Soldier (Confederate)

With this man I'm really going out on a genealogical limb--if I'm right, Dr. Neal is my second cousin, four times removed, through the my great great grandmother Sarah Matthews' line. But is he really?

Here's the 1850 U.S. Census records for the family of one of my first cousins, five times removed, Elizabeth Matthews Neal.

[Year: 1850; Census Place: District 13, Panola, Mississippi; Roll: M432_379; Page: 309B; Image: 236. Ancestry.com. 1850 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Seventh Census of the United States, 1850; (National Archives Microfilm Publication M432, 1009 rolls); Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29; National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

[Detail of above]


Does this 13-year-old Mississippi-born boy turn out to be Vandy Marcellus Neal? I'm sure you've seen how badly census takers can maul unusual names and in this case the person who indexed the records read it as Vankrum. What do you think?

Oddly, although there are quite a few other records for Vandy, he somehow doesn't show up in any other censuses.

For instance we know that he graduated from the University of Louisiana, class of 1860, and served as an assistant surgeon in the 37th Alabama Regiment of Volunteer Infantry in 1862 (although he resigned effective almost immediately) and he served in several Alabama reserve companies in 1864.

[Civil War Service Index - Confederate - Alabama.
The National Archives via Fold3.com]

The following image and Dr. Neal's obituary were found on the public Ancestry.com family tree of h0uston511. Sadly the obituary doesn't mention his parents so I can't be sure that he's actually one of my distant relatives.




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