Tag Archives: Genealogy

Maryland Magruders & the Civil War #1

Marylanders in the Civil War

As the largest slave-owning border state, deeply divided between its slave and free economies, Maryland passed through a secession crisis in 1861 but ultimately remained in the Union. Slave-owning, Southern-sympathizing, but ultimately pro-Union men were a feature of Maryland politics (they had a lot to lose) and their influence helped prevent secession. Once the fighting started, they mostly tried to stay out of it but their sons and younger brothers did not necessarily agree.

As the war began, thousands of Confederate volunteers ran the Union blockade to reach Virginia and enlist. The thousands of Union volunteers had a shorter trip to a recruiting office. On the Union side, perhaps as many as 60,000 served in a total of forty-two Maryland units of various sizes. Others served in the U.S. Army, the Regulars. On the Confederate side there was no direct enlistment from Maryland and relatively few men served in Maryland-identified units. This makes identification difficult but estimates run around 25,000 in Confederate uniform.

If you have been told that Maryland was really, at the heart, a Confederate state, pause for a moment and consider those numbers. It was easy for white Marylanders to stay safely north of the Potomac while running their mouths (or their printing presses) about Southern rights and Lincoln-the-tyrant. Men who actually fought for the Confederacy were not fond of that kind of Marylander. After the war, many stay-at-homes were magically transformed into Rebels—including a few Magruders.

Magruders in the Civil War

Magruders began emigrating out of Maryland in the 18th century. By 1861, their descendants, of various surnames and scores of family lines, were sprawled across the country, mostly in the south. It is impossible to estimate their numbers, let alone their Civil War service. Searching only for those named Magruder or McGruder provides a cross-section of their allegiances and choices. Ancestry’s database of “U.S., Civil War Soldiers 1861-1865,” for example, yields 275 Magruder and McGruder men, of whom 150 were Confederates. An impressive sixty-eight served in regiments of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), leaving just fifty-seven white Magruder soldiers for the Union.

Most accounts of war service focus on officers, but the “contrasting dye” of Magruder descent cuts through that bias to uncover the lives of at least a few enlisted men. Here are two of them.

Edward W. Magruder & Arthur Robinson

Among Maryland Magruders who served as privates in the Confederate army was Edward Walter Magruder (1840-1886), son of Caleb Clark Magruder (1808-1884), a prominent Prince George’s County attorney who would raise his voice in defense of Maryland slaveowners throughout the war. In 1860, C. C. Magruder owned $50,000 in real estate and $40,000 in personal property, including thirty slaves.

Edward, a graduate of Georgetown College, served first as a bugler in the 1st Maryland Artillery. In March 1863, still a bugler, he transferred to Company E of the 1st Maryland Cavalry. Two months later, on 12 June, as the Army of Northern Virginia was advancing toward Maryland on its way to Pennsylvania for what became the Gettysburg campaign, his detachment was surprised by Union troops near Winchester. Of ninety-two men, the Baltimore Sun estimated that twenty-five were killed or wounded and twenty-nine taken prisoner, Edward among them. Two days later the prisoners reached Baltimore where they were confined at Fort McHenry until the twenty-sixth, when they were sent to Fortress Monroe—the Union toehold in Virginia at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay—for a prisoner exchange.

POW records describe Edward W. Magruder as a musician, twenty-two years old, five-foot-four, with dark eyes, hair, and complexion. Though exchanged, he was not quickly back in the saddle. In August he wrote to a friend requesting help getting reimbursement for the horse, sixty-dollar saddle, and hundred-dollar brace of Navy repeaters lost to the Union at Winchester. These valuable possessions (more than $4,000 in 2026 dollars, plus the horse) highlight the fact that Confederate cavalrymen, even privates, had to supply their own horses and weapons. Poor men didn’t ride for the South. “I am entirely dismounted,” Edward wrote, “and unless you can do something…why my cavalry days will have ended.” Edward W. Magruder survived the war, married twice, and died in 1886.

When the war broke out, Edward’s brother, Caleb Clark Magruder Jr. (1839-1922) was just completing his law degree. He would stay in Maryland to follow in his father’s footsteps. When the Federal draft was instituted, in March 1863, he signed an oath of allegiance to the Union, registered as required, and in 1864 found himself drafted. No worries for Caleb though—he would quickly take advantage of one of the Lincoln policies so hated by his father: the inclusion of African Americans in the pool of eligible recruits.

The most common way to escape the Union draft was to find a substitute. You could pay someone directly to take your place or cough up a $300 bounty for a substitute to be found. This led to a popular belief among Southerners that a majority of Union soldiers were cynical “bounty men” with no interest in the issues at stake in the war. Scholarship debunks that, but can’t stop Lost Cause adherents from passing it around the internet as fact.

In Confederate states, draftees had no such option. By the end of the war, all men from eighteen to fifty were subject to the draft. Money and class still counted but the bar was well above $300. The hated “twenty n____ rule” exempted men who owned or were overseers over twenty or more enslaved workers. Benjamin Henry Magruder, a Virginian whose parents had left Maryland in the 18th century, was among those who pushed the bill through the Confederate legislature.

In Maryland, meanwhile, no man of means would ever need fight unless he chose to. C. C. Magruder Jr. chose not to. In his place went another Marylander, thirty-seven-year-old Arthur Robinson. Records I have seen do not specify whether Robinson was free or enslaved. Maryland enslavers who were drafted sometimes sent one of their own captive laborers to fight in their place but we don’t know if C. C. Magruder was one of them.

Enrolled on 27 August 1864, Arthur Robinson would have just fifteen days to get used to army life before joining his unit, Company H of the 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, in the trenches at Petersburg. He was fortunate to join after General Grant’s bloody Overland Campaign, when the 19th endured six battles in two months, and after the disastrous Battle of the Crater, at Petersburg, where black troops were mercilessly slaughtered. Though twice hospitalized he also evaded death by disease.

Like many black soldiers Robinson would serve well beyond the surrenders of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox and Joseph E. Johnston in Georgia. In Texas, where a few die-hard leaders hoped to pull Mexico into the rebellion’s death-throes, fighting simmered on. With a three-year enlistment commencing in 1864, Robinson—like thousands of other black soldiers—would serve longer in Texas than anywhere else, at last mustered out with his regiment on 15 January 1867.

If you are a descendant of any of these men, or know more about them than I do, I would very much appreciate hearing from you.

Sources

1860 Census, Maryland, Prince George’s, Marlboro, p. 484 (no stamp), line 30, dw 999, fam 1022, C.C. Magruder. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7667/records/53991592 : 13 Jan 26.

1860 Slave Schedule, Maryland, Prince George’s, District 9, page 452 (stamped) , C. C. Magruder https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7668/records/91870149?tid=&pid=&queryId=0c9ca8ca-cc64-4b3e-8328-b00f50e3fbe9&_phsrc=RJs39&_phstart=successSource : 13 Jan 26.

Civil War Service Records (CMSR), Confederate, Maryland, 1861-1865, pub. M321, NARA, RG 109, Company Muster Rolls, First Maryland Cavalry, Edward W. Magruder, Fold3, https://www.fold3.com/file/113328025 : 25 May 25

CMSR, Prisoners of War record, 26 Jun 63, Edward W. Magruder, Fold3, https://www.fold3.com/image/113328031/magruder-edward-w-page-7-us-civil-war-service-records-cmsr-confederate-maryland-1861-1865 : 27 May 25.

Edward W. Magruder to Waller S. Taylor, 25 Aug 1863, Fold3, https://www.fold3.com/image/113328036/magruder-edward-w-page-12-us-civil-war-service-records-cmsr-confederate-maryland-1861-1865 : 27 May 25.

Robert  J. Driver Jr., First and Second Maryland Cavalry, C.S.A. (Charlottesville: Howell Press, 1999), 257.

“Local Matters: Confederate Marylanders Killed, Wounded and Captured,” Baltimore Sun, 15 Jun 1863, 1, Newspapers.com.

“Benjamin Henry Magruder, by His Children,” ACGS Yearbook, Gathering of 1921, edited by Egbert Watson Magruder (Charlottesville, Mitchie Co., 1922), 55.

Robert Summers, Maryland’s Black Civil War Soldiers: 19th Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, Kindle edition (N.p.: self-published, 2020), 9-11, 933.

19th US Colored Infantry, Misc. Cards, D-Y, CMSR-Union-Colored Troops 14th-19th Infantry, 1861-1865, NARA, RG 94, Arthur Robinson, Fold3.com (https://www.fold3.com/image/264866247/robinson-arthur-page-1-us-civil-war-service-records-cmsr-union-colored-troops-14th-19th-infantry-186 : 12 Jun 25).

The “Contrasting Dye” of Family

So, I was lying on the table as a tech got me ready for a CT Scan, and asking questions. He confirmed what I had assumed: that the intravenous contrasting dye goes everywhere your circulatory system goes. How the results are read depends on what the radiologist looks for, which in turn depends on what the doctor asked for. If he needs information about your kidneys, the report won’t mention your lungs.

This got me thinking about genealogy and family research–the question of “what’s there” vs. “what we’re looking for.” Some people inject “Magruder” into archival records, into a community, into the body politic, to find illustrious connections. I get a small but steady trickle of messages from people interested in royal descent, for example, which doesn’t interest me at all. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some just want to identify a great-grandmother. Sometimes I can help with that, not always.

When I started my Magruder book project I wanted to see what an injection of “Magruder” would show about my family’s involvement in slavery. As neither family trees nor archival records have a natural boundary like that of a single human body, I decided my circulatory system would be limited to Maryland and D.C., with occasional excursions to Virginia.

Within that body of evidence, I would look at two questions.

First, would I find that my relatives and other Magruder descendants had taken part in every aspect of the pernicious institution, from manumissions to slave trading?

Some answers so far:

Claims by descendants (including my grandmother) that an ancestor “freed his slaves” far outnumber manumissions that are visible in the records. The 19th century requirement that free blacks in Maryland carry papers proving their status means that, at least within the time span of that law, the answer is not ambiguous. (My great-great-grandfather, it turns out, was living in D.C. at the time in question, so I am still researching his story.)

And, so far, I have found just one man who (according to one of his half-siblings) signed on as driver for a slave trader trafficking people to the Deep South. Magruders did do business with slave traders, however, both buying and selling human beings. More than a million people were trafficked from the Upper South to the Deep South between 1808 and Emancipation, including a substantial percentage of people enslaved in Maryland and Virginia, and the sale of healthy, young workers was lucrative. Magruders did not stand apart from this reality. In a few cases, Magruders who advertised people for sale (in between ads for hay, cattle, furniture, and shoes) took steps to ensure that they could not be removed from the state.

Second, would my search paths illuminate the lives of any of the thousands of people who were enslaved by Magruders and descendants, from the 1660s to the 1860s?

The answer so far:

A few. The best resources are the so-called Slave Statistics compiled from 1864 (date of Maryland Emancipation) to 1869. These are the affidavits sworn by enslavers who hoped that either the state or the Federal government would compensate them for the loss of their captive laborers. Filing required a second affidavit affirming that the filer had remained true to the Union and not supported the rebellion–which, of course, many could not or would not swear to. The whole process was voluntary and aspirational–compensation did not materialize–so the record is partial, but the affidavits provide each enslaved person’s first and last name and age. This is a tremendous head-start for descendants who are researching their family trees–full name, approximate age, and last enslaver. In some cases, family groupings are clear. Once those relationships have been established, the next question is: how do we get to the next generation back?

A large part of my research in the last ten years has focused on helping with that question by connecting the Slave Statistics for Prince George’s County to the probate, land, and tax records of enslavers. In some cases I have been able to assemble known or likely family lines and siblings by tracing them through several generations of white family records. I have posted about this before and will do so again. In my book, I sometimes pause the narrative to provide explicit information about “Following the Lines” of these families.

And then, of course, I am too curious for my own good.

People, places, events…things surface in my reading that I just have to learn more about. Rabbit holes turn into tunnels. Or should I say that what I thought was a capillary turns out to be an artery.

Which is how the Civil War / Emancipation era came to dominate my research for the last…well, it might be three years. Working title for that section of the book: “When Everything Happened.”

So, it’s time to share. Starting now, I will try to post at least once a week about something in my research. I’m starting with Civil War soldiers–both Yanks and Rebs, most white, two black–whose lives I never would have known about had they not been illuminated by the “contrasting dye” of Magruder descent.

Why should you obsessively check every possible source?

Because the answers aren’t always where you expect them to be. Because random stuff happens. Because an unrelated record may point to what you need. Here are four illustrations.

Proving a small but interesting detail: Reading estate papers for my g-g-grandfather’s older brother, Oliver Barron Magruder, who died in 1852, I found a receipt from the court for 25 cents for an unpaid fee at the courthouse, dating back to 1849. It confirmed that Oliver had been guardian to my ancestor, Fielder Montgomery Magruder, after their father died. In 1849, Oliver had distributed to Fielder what he had coming on his 21st birthday, but forgot to pay the 25-cent fee. It was paid by his estate in 1852.

Proving parentage: Fielder M. & Oliver B. Magruder’s grandfather was Haswell Magruder (1736-1811). One of Haswell’s sons, Samuel, was not mentioned in his will so most genealogists have missed him entirely. This causes additional confusion when researchers see his marriage, family, census, land records, tax records, etc., in Prince Georges County, and don’t know who this Samuel Magruder was. Some then conflate him with a different Samuel Magruder, from Montgomery County. I found confirmation of my Samuel’s existence and parentage in some of Haswell’s land records.

From 1789 to 1800 Haswell transferred slaves by name, and tracts of land by name to his children. For tracts of land surveyed in colonial Maryland the property’s name was part of its legal description and for generations continued to be recorded when properties changed hands. In 1789, Haswell gave part of “Berry’s Folly” to his son Samuel. (Two years later, he gave another piece of “Berry’s Folly” to another son, William, who is in the will.) Samuel died in 1826 and the estate was not quickly settled, so the 1833 tax records for Prince George’s (published by the P.G. County Historical Society in 1985) show “pt. of Berry’s Folly” as one of the tracts owned by “Samuel Magruder heirs,” close to land owned by William and another of their brothers. Samuel’s various records (including references to “part of Berry’s Folly”) then provided pathways to the estate of his widow, Anne, who wrote a detailed will in 1855. I am working on tracing enslaved families to emancipation through this line of inheritance. (I also, eventually, found records to confirm that the other Samuel Magruder stayed in Frederick and Montgomery counties and never moved to P.G.)

Proving divorce: From years of researching Roderick McGregor and the rest of the Prince George’s County family whose name was changed from Magruder to McGregor in the 1820s, I was convinced that Roderick and his wife, Anne E. E. Berry (widow Eaten or Ayten) had divorced. As I accumulated various records about them circumstances pointed to the year 1843. Unfortunately for me that was just after the legislature (whose records are online) delegated divorce cases to the county courts. County clerks did not index the Prince George’s court records at the time and case folders had been haphazardly boxed when the county transferred them to the Maryland State Archives, so a search was going to be daunting, if not impossible. Eventually (by which I mean in about twenty years) I narrowed the time frame to just a few months in 1843. With the help of an MSA archivist I found the court dockets for those months and–Eureka!–there was the McGregor divorce case!

Discovery! Vindication!

The archivist said that, armed with a date and case number, he could find and pull the case. You can imagine my excitement waiting for his next message! Sadly, he emailed with bad news: many folders were missing and McGregor v. McGregor was one of them.

So, what to do?

On my next in-person visit to the archives I combed many years of court dockets, noting every case showing either of their names. Most were irrelevant, but then…(drum roll, please!)…twelve years after they divorced, Roderick sued Ann and her brother. I pulled that case. Roderick wanted the court to stop Ann and her brother from digging a ditch that could have flooded part of his land. As part of the case his attorney submitted the entire transcript of their divorce case (presumably as evidence of ill-will) and it was duly entered into the record, with certification that it was accurate and complete. Hallelujah! I finally got to read the McGregors’ dirty laundry.

Finding an enslaved ancestor: A correspondent sought my help to identify the mother of an ancestor who was born in slavery and still a child at the time of emancipation. Her death certificate was unhelpful and those of siblings proved no more useful. We knew the last slaveholder’s name but probate records turned up nothing. Dead-ended there, I searched the name of a different slaveholder in the same family and found a newspaper advertisement listing people to be sold as part of an estate settlement. The little girl who started our search–the known ancestor–was named there as part of a family group with a woman and a boy. Since we knew the girl’s surname, I searched for the boy’s name with the same surname and found him in city directories after emancipation doing the same work he was noted for in the slaveholder’s records. It wasn’t proof that the woman in the ad was their mother but it was strong circumstantial evidence. The family was not sold, BTW, despite that advertisement–I found them in later records with the same slaveholder.

When AI Transcription Fails, Try Another Site

If you search on Ancestry for the sons of Haswell Magruder (1736-1811) in the 1810 census, you will probably find only Fielder (1780-1840) and William (1773-1842). Paging through the census images will reveal the other brothers, Samuel (abt 1765-1826) and Edward (1778-1842)–both quite readable, by the way.

Haswell’s daughters are also there, under their husbands’ names: James Moran, husband of Hester Beall Magruder (abt 1764-1832) and Adam Crawford (or Crauford), husband of his Sophia (abt 1771-1836). (Honestly, it looks like the girls just married the nearest man. Their choice or their father’s?)

All are in the “Scotland Ocean & Bladensburgh Hundreds.” The “hundreds” were the original districts, a terminology held over from colonial times.

But even knowing they were there, no amount of searching and no search engine trickery would cough up a result for Edward or Samuel.

…Until a big duh moment today, when I recalled the very different format on Family Search. It opens up a sidebar for transcriptions instead of a separate page, so you can scroll through both simultaneously. All I had to do was find Fielder and Haswell, on p. 53, and then scroll back to p. 50, where I knew the missing brothers were lurking. Both cleverly concealed, it turns out, under the transcriptions: “Ewd Maginden” and “Saml Maginden.”

When I entered those names on Ancestry, up they popped. I’ve entered alternate names for both, so hopefully future searches there will succeed.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9YY1-9YB4?view=index&action=view
Family Search link to p.50, Edward & Samuel — free
https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/91784:7613?tid=21996598&pid=1166242063&queryId=91e69e0f-145b-4239-a0f8-c8c129c6d69e&_phsrc=Gzo3198&_phstart=successSource
Ancestry Link to “Ewd Maginden” — requires a subscription