Subject: Gudgel History

From: dg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:11:15 -0700

I want to dedicate this letter to Walter Harris and Pearl Brokofsky
who supplied me with valuable pictures and genealogy information.

Things have been pretty quiet so it may be appropriate for someone to
do something to lighten it up.  My thought was to give a rundown of my
history because it I have enough back to William Gudgel the last son
of old Andrew who stayed on and died there. We are connected to a lot
of you so you may also be interested in it. To those who may not be
connected it still may be of interest because of your genealogy
interest.   I have pictures of Gudgel's who were born shortly after
1800 so she will be an ancestor to a lot of you which may be of
interest. She had 12 children so there are of lot of her descendants
around. Maybe you are one of them. Keep in mind  anything posted to
the Internet is kept in a file somewhere.  Google will keep it and as
long as Google exists it
will be available.  You do not have to pay some Genealogy company to
keep your records.  It is reported that the
US is building a facility in Utah that will be able to keep records of
everything that happens in the US for the next 100 years.  Not just
the Internet but EVERYTHING.  So it should not be a big job for google
go do the same with Internet postings. Memory has now become almost
limitless.

A former Vice President has said there are things that are known and
things that are unknown.  There are some things we are fairly certain
about our ancestor Andrew Gudgel and some things not so certain.  We
are fairly certain about Andrew since he moved to Indiana and built
the cabin there outside of Owensville. I have a picture of it. Before
that things in some area are quite murkey. We are certain because we
have a picture of his gravestone.  He had a son William who remained
on the farm after old Andrew died.  William married Lucinda Thurman a
daughter of a Illinois Senator.  I have a picture of her in front of
the cabin made on an albumen print which would let us get an
approximate date it was taken but I have not done that up to now. I
can not give some dates because I am doing this from memory.

Because William and Lucy had such a bunch of kids there are a lot of
Gudgel's around descended from them.  You had to have a bunch because
you didn't have Uncle Sam around to take care of you in your old age.
One of these kids was my GG Grandfather Henry T Gudgel.  Well, Henry
married Sarah Johnson.  I have her picture.  They wound up in
Illinois.  Whether he married her in Indiana or Illinois I don't
remember.  People in those days as today moved a lot of the time to be
near family.  So I suppose that is the reason he moved to Illinois.  I
don't know of any Gudgel's in Illinois at this time before the
un-Civil war. Athens was the city not far from Springfield the home of
Abraham Lincoln.   They no doubt was able to hear Lincoln campaign for
president.

Poverty was rampant.  A newspaper just at the start of the war
published the names of 1,200 people whose farms were up for sale
because of non-payment of taxes.   Many not more than 2 or 3 dollars.
So Henry t saw the war as an opportunity to save the farm and pay the
taxes out of his $8.00 a month. I think they were $1.75 That was a
mistake because Grant select the location of Fort Holt, a temporary
fort, down on the flats next to the cofluence of the Ohio and the
Mississippi where he contracted typhoid feever and died.  No doubt for
drinking te river water.

Instead of trying to re-write I am going to the google archives and
include something I put up many years ago.  I don't remember when I
published it but after a while I get tired and my one good eye gets
tired looking through the cataract, glaucoma and maclular degeneration
so it is more complete anyway.

 Walter  Harris, Pearl Brokofsky, and Lottie Harris  (a picture)
This page is dedicated to
Walter Harris.
Born January 9. 1906

All this business about the Reenactment regiment came about when I
could not find where Henry T Gudgel was buried after he died in the
Service in the Civil War.  Henry T was one of the sons of William and
Lucinda Gudgel and he stayed on at the homestead  where Andrew settled
after moving from Kentucky.  The other siblings  moved  away. I have
never heard who stayed on the farm to take care of it after Andrew
died in 1815.  William was born in 1801 so he would have been only 14
when his father died and would have not been old enough to manage the
farm by himself.  In any case he stayed on the farm and eventually
married Lucinda Thurman when she was 18 years old and they had a
family of 12 over the years.

Here is the strange part. Henry moved to Illinois and entered the
Service there in the 28th Illinois Volunteers.  But  he was married in
Gibson County Indiana.  This is speculation on my part but I think he
probably moved because his wife
 Johnson had relatives in Illinois.  Or they moved there and Sarah and
Henry moved to be near them.  But they definitely moved to Illinois
leaving one son, my great grandfather Thomas Jefferson, behind.
Whether Thomas stayed behind or moved back later I don't know at this
time.  But he definitely was in Indiana when he joined the 10th
Indiana Cavalary.  So at this time I don't know if he went back later
or stayed behind at the move from Indiana by Henry T and Sarah. This
caused me much trouble later when  I was trying to find the military
records of Thomas Jefferson Gudgel. I got on the wrong track because I
was looking in Illinois records for him.  In the meantime he was
living with his grandfather William in Indiana. For a little more
information on this mixup go to my story on Walter Harris.  People
then were more or less like people today. They moved to be near
relatives.  I do not have a picture of  Sarah Johnson but do have some
tintypes who I do not know who the people are.  These tintypes came
from Thomas Jefferson Gudgel's wedding bible. One may be Sarah
Johnson. Probably is. I am posting this picture with the caution that
it is only a guess it might be Sarah Johnson.

After I had searched for the burial place of my Great Great
Grandfather Henry T Gudgel we were unable to find any record of what
happened to him after get got sick and died there at Camp Holt.  Camp
Holt was a temporary camp for the 28th Regiment across the river where
the interstate highway bridge now crosses.  This was early in  the
war. Going east on the bridge the camp was situated to the left right
after you cross the river.  Also Camp Holt was just a few miles down
the river from Cairo Ill. where U S Grant had his shoe store during
peacetime. There was terrible sickness from typhoid from drinking the
river water.  Soldiers were dying like flies.  In some places the
medical people had what was called pestilence barges to put the sick
on because there were so many.  Just how the mixup came regarding the
loss of Henry we don't know but no doubt they were frightened about
disease and he got lost in the shuffle somehow.

The hospital was a brick building I was told when I went there
searching for the grave of Henry.  I thought I might get a brick as a
souvenir when I went there.  I was told that a man from Kentucky had
bought the bricks to build something but I don't know if anything came
of it.  But I didn't get a brick.
The  military  records say that he was taken to  the hospital at Mound
City just up the Ohio River about 6 or 7  miles. But he was not listed
there at the military cemetery.  There is a cemetery nearby where 2 or
3 thousand are buried. I enlisted anyone I could to try to locate a
record of him.  But to no avail.   So, finally after fruitless
searching, the 28th Illinois Volunteers Reenactment Regiment got the
government to provide a headstone and they had a parade through Athens
out to the cemetery and had a ceremony placing the stone next to Sarah
his wife.   I want to thank the 28th Illinois Volunteers for all their
help. This headstone was provided by the U S Government.

Walter  Harris, Pearl Brokofsky, and Lottie Harris A picture of all three.
28th Illinois Volunteers Re-enactment Regiment the reenactment squad
pose with Walter
had a ceremony The squad salute with rifles.
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