The Legend of Youngs Corner XXXIV

PART XXXIV
Civil War Answers

2002

I went back to school and started my research. Upon reaching Ancestry.com I quickly realized it was a subscription service. However, there were still some services offered that were free, and I took as much advantage from them as I could.

I started by doing a simple search for ‘Christopher F. Cox.’ Not much came up, as I expected. But there were other problems. Not only were there many Christopher’s by the same name, but if I wanted to receive more information on those that looked promising, I had to pay for it. Despite the website’s comprehensive database of America’s past, I knew that any future searches would be fruitless. But there was one glimmer of hope. Ancestry.com claims to gather most of their information from the thousands of city halls across the country. So that’s where I went. To the website that is.

Auburn City Hall. The website was mostly concerned with tourism and industry. In the history section there was a little information including a link to our county’s historical society. This looked the most promising. It brought me to Androscoggin County’s website. I eventually found a search engine for family histories. This had to be it, this was the answer. I typed ‘Christopher F. Cox’ and pressed enter.

A few weeks later, I got this response:

‘This is taken from Civil War Genealogy Data System:
Christopher F Cox, Auburn, ME. Private, 35 years old. Enlisted 9/22/61 9th. Maine Infantry. Wounded 7/18/1863 Fort Wagner SC, wounded 6/26/1864 Peterburg, Va. Survived war. Mustered out 9/27/1864. Hope this helps. The Archives in Augusta, ME. may have a description of him on an index card.’

The Civil War. My suspicions were proved correct. I always believed Little Christopher was connected to the war, now I had my proof. It turns out that his father, a man of the same name, volunteered for the 9th Maine Infantry when it was organized in Augusta, Maine’s capital, on September 22, 1861. Records also give the name of his wife, Libby H. This is a perfect match with the gravestone. Libby would have been 3 months pregnant by the time Christopher Sr. enlisted. Christopher Jr. was born on February 16, 1862 while his father was still at war. According to records, Christopher Sr. returned home after being wounded for the second time on September 7, 1864. Little Christopher died just a few months before, on February 18, 1864. His father came home to a dead son, a son he most likely never met.

I called Auburn City Hall for vital records for Christopher Sr. but they did not start recording such records until the 1890's. All they could tell me was that the graveyard at my house was, “unregistered.”