Companion to "Civil War Deserters in the Mountains: Genealogical Clues in Court Records"
Civil War desertion in the Appalachian mountains was not the act of a coward. It was often the act of a father, a son, or a man caught between a distant battlefield and a family that could not survive without him. This companion gives you the tools to find him in the records he left behind, guiding you through the court minutes, provost marshal files, pension depositions, amnesty applications, and conscription rolls where mountain men who stepped away from service left their traces. Includes guidance on reading the silences in these records as carefully as the words themselves.