Bill Carwile's pursuit of family history is akin to the 157-year-old quilt his mother's family has handed down.
With patches of information, the Decatur resident pieces together his genealogical background.
A stitch of information on three Carwile brothers coming to America from Wales on his father's side. On his mother's side, a stitch of information on a predecessor who rode on a blind horse from Pulaski, Tenn., to Nashville to find work.
Like the heirloom quilt, some stitches are missing in Carwile's lineage. For example, he's not sure from which of the three brothers his family line descended.
There are other tattered holes in both the quilt and family history that he has not sewn shut.
But Carwile, 73, keeps piecing the stories together.
Technology has enabled him to gather much of his information by communicating via e-mail with relatives across the United States who likewise are researching family history.
One of those e-mail contacts, Whitefoord Cole, a cousin from Boston on Carwile's mother's side, recently sent information on a Civil War-era relative who was a member of the 4th Regiment, Alabama Volunteer Militia and then the 40th Alabama Regiment. The relative, 2nd Lt. John Moore, became a prisoner of war while in Georgia. The Union sent him to Johnson's Island Prison in northern Ohio.
"The main thing I get excitement from is when I run across something I didn't know," said Carwile, who has been doing family research for about six years. "When I read about this Lt. Moore, I just thought it was an amazing story."
The Alabama Review in 1959 documented letters Moore wrote from prison. He did not write to family in the South because the Union would not permit it. Moore wrote to a friend, a professor in Milwaukee who had once taught in Marion, where Moore lived.
According to the magazine Archeology, which studied the prison's layout, prisoners survived by eating rats and candles. Moore did not elaborate on such horrors of prison life. He wrote about being sick, hungry or cold, but mostly requested assistance and shared information about acquaintances in Marion.
In July 1864, Moore wrote his professor friend, an S.S. Sherman, asking for Union money to buy "things as I most need here." Later that month Moore shared news from home with Sherman.
"Go to our church, and you will find the congregation composed almost entirely of ladies and old gray-headed men and nearly all clad in the habiliments of grief," Moore wrote.
As weather cooled, Moore asked for Sherman to send him clothing and cans of preserved fruits.
"I have chronic diarrhea, and I fear it will be a long time before I recover," Moore wrote.
Later, the prison stopped allowing Confederate soldiers to buy food and would only allow Northern relatives to send provisions.
"My health is not so good as it was some weeks ago," Moore wrote. "During the last 10 days I have suffered very much. I am now under the surgeon's treatment."
The Union released Moore in October, and he returned to Marion and resumed practicing law.
When Carwile learns about stories like these, he keeps them documented on his computer. Carwile, a real estate retiree, said he started this hobby when an Athens relative did a book on the Carwile family.
"You have to dive in and go at it," Carwile said of the research. "You have to be interested in it to stay with it."
The computer search engine Google is a favorite of Carwile's. He can type a name for Google to search online through newspaper articles, family Web sites or directories.
"A lot of times you don't think about asking the older generation questions," Carwile said. "Maybe they wouldn't want to answer them, but without those family stories, you have to depend on doing a lot of research. "
Sometimes, Carwile finds information by accident, and then his research pays off. Once when he tried to e-mail his niece and mistyped her e-mail address, his e-mail went to a Carwile in California. Turns out, she is a distant relative.
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