iPentimento | Genealogy and History

Until we could see the actual entry in John Breedlove’s diary for ourselves, it was a mystery as to what had happened to John’s younger brother William Dawson Breedlove. Family history had him serving in the war too, but we didn’t know if it was CSA or USA.   By doing some fairly easy detective work, we’ve been able to bring some finality to our quest.

Going by the notation John made in his diary, I knew to look for William in the 1st Missouri, Battery (K).  That wasn’t a lot to go on, but I knew the state of Missouri have their digital archives online, with a section of military records from 1812 – WWI, so that was my first place to look. After some trial and error on searches using variations on the surname (Breedlove, Breadlove) and his first name, two results came back. One of them was for a William Breedlove, 1st Regiment Artillery Missouri Volunteers, Company K. I wasn’t quite sure from John’s script handwriting whether he was referring to K or R. Now, I knew it was K and the full name of his unit.

Wm D Breedlove service record

Clicking on more detailed information on the website took me to another page where it listed (from his service card) that he was a Private with a link to an image of the original card in PDF format. Using SnagIt, I captured the image and put it into a jpg file, as you can see above.

I was quite surprised to see the additional information on William’s death and where he might be buried. I had never heard of Mound City National Cemetery and I had a difficult time making out the state, but I did a Google search and found the webpage for it and it’s in Illinois. I chose the link on the Interment.com site for Mound City Nat. Cem. and was pleasantly surprised again to see there is an alphabetical listing of over 5,000 surnames. As noted on the service card, William is listed as “Bredlow, W. B”.  Is it “our” William? I like to think it is, and that he knows he has not been forgotten.

Today, I added the files listed here to his memorial at Find-A-Grave and asked for a photo volunteer to take a recent picture of his grave. Cross your fingers!