Week 6 | Busy Schedule

            Hello all, Aaron here for another Week in the Olustee internship. This week was pretty brutal in terms of work, as I correctly predicted it would be last week. I’ve been hard at work researching and writing an essay for one of my classes, and it has unfortunately taken more time out of my schedule than I was expecting it to. As a result, I did not get as much work done for the Olustee project as I was hoping to do (thankfully, I was able to make some progress). 

            In the meantime, Dr. Gannon communicated to us some of the information she wanted for the Olustee story map. I was unable to help her with writing passengers detailing the histories and service records of the regiments that fought at Olustee, as I was busy researching my essay when she sent out the email. My fellow interns took on that responsibility instead, which I am grateful for. Just yesterday, Dr. Gannon also sent out a request for images of soldiers from the regiments involved at the battle, with a preference for images that showcase the entire regiment at once (a group photo). Dr. Gannon admitted that photos of these men would likely be hard to come by, since there wasn’t much reason to even take pictures of everyday soldiers back then. The vast majority of photos are of either generals and commanding officers or massive groups that might not even be identified as any one regiment. There’s also the problem of finding images that are free to use, such as those that can be claimed as under Creative Commons. If we can’t find images depicting our respective regiments, Dr. Gannon said that we would have to resort to using placeholder images—in the case of the 8th and 35th USCT, that might be using an image from another colored infantry unit instead. I did find one image that may be a potential candidate on an older website discussing the Battle of Olustee, but the image doesn’t specify what regiment it portrays. I’ll send it over to Dr. Gannon and see what she makes of it.

            On the other hand, my name gathering is proceeding smoothly. After identifying two or three sources for each of the 8th USCT’s Olustee casualties, I started gathering the names of the 35th USCT’s soldiers. Finding sources for the fates of the 35th USCT after Olustee will be much harder than that of the 8th as two of the resources I used that concern the 8th do not have corresponding entries for the 35th. I can’t use the muster records on Ancestry.com since none of the 35th’s casualties were listed as “mustered out” after their deaths (though I can still probably find something on Ancestry), and I can’t use FamilySearch.com since none of the records detailed there reveal if a soldier died or not. The only source I was able to find is an admittedly dubious website from the early 2000s, which features death records from only half of the 35th’s companies and neglects to reveal where the information actually came from. I’ll have to give these sources a more thorough examination when I have more time.

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