We’ve all heard of the war of 1812, but outside of the fact that the capital was burned by the British, we probably don’t know very much about it. This book discusses the issues that led up to the War, the political implications and realities, and also describes the strategy and outcome of the battles. While some may find this book too detailed regarding the battles, its strength is in the depictions of the politicians and soldiers who were involved in various ways in the conflict. Also, since this war was fought pretty much along with length and breadth of the country, don’t think that just because your ancestor didn’t live in the “right place”, they were not involved. I had an ancestor who was living in Canada at the time who was impacted by the War.
Why should genealogists care about wars? There are several reasons. If your ancestor fought in a war, there are likely to be records to that effect, and genealogists love records. They might have earned bounty land, and that means more records. Sometimes people relocated after a war (maybe due to those bounty lands!), and sometimes they name their children after people they fought with or who become well known because of the war. Of course the downside is that sometimes men get “lost” from the records. We assume they die when they don’t show back up with their families, but we may not have proof.
Another thing sometimes affected by war is popular culture. The War of 1812 gave us the expressions “Don’t give up the ship” and “We have met the enemy, and they are ours”. The battle cry of “Remember the Raisin”, however, did not last as long in popular memory. There were at least two songs that were inspired by this war, one many years after the fact. “The Battle of New Orleans” by Johnny Horton was first released in 1959. But the most famous composition, inspired by the shelling of Fort McHenry, was the poem composed by Francis Scott Key, which of course became our national anthem. One of the biggest impacts was that people stopped referring to the United States as a plural noun (the United States have . . ), and started using it as a singular noun (the United States has . . ). Subtle, but psychologically important.
If this was your family, how would you research them? One of the best-known places for military records is Fold3. Many libraries have a library version, and one of Ancestry’s options also allows you access. Of course, the National Archives have a wealth of information, including those bounty land records. There is also a blog called War of 1812 Chronicles, http://warof1812chronicles.blogspot.com/, which may not have much genealogical information, but appears to have at least a little information about any aspect of the War you could think of. I found this blog through Cyndi’s list, which has many other links that I did not explore. If you discover an ancestor who fought in this war, you might want to look into lineage societies. The War of 1812 appears to only have two societies, the General Society of the War of 1812 for the men, and the National Society Daughters of the War of 1812 for the women.