Eureka! I found it I found it!

My title doesn't sound enthusiastic enough. When I finally found a missing piece of the puzzle I actually started jumping up and down. Yes folks, that is what my life has come to. Excitement over dead people. But since most of you reading my blog are probably interested in genealogy too you can understand.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier post or not but there is a Civil War sword in my family. I first found out about it when I was in 6th grade learning about the Civil War and thought it was "soooo cool" to have a sword in the family. And it is. Very cool.

I've been doing this genealogy thing for a while now. Really focusing on it since 2009. My grandfather told me he got the sword from his grandfather. Silly me I assumed it would be his paternal grandfather. My brain assumed since my grandfather's last name is Persing that it would have been a Persing that owned the sword. Whoops. Anyway, I did find Civil War veterans in that branch of the family. (This was almost a year ago) I was very excited about finding Ilif Persing and when I told my grandpa... surprise! He got the sword from his other grandfather. Marion Hauck. So it was back to the drawing board. Then I found some Hauck's in the civil war.

Sometime between then and now my mom took a trip to Pennsylvania and I asked her to take some pictures of the sword among other things. Using the pictures (and comparing with others online), I was able to determine that the sword was from the Union Cavalry. I assumed Union before since, hey, Pennsylvania. Anyway it is a US model 1860 Cavalry Saber. Company (I think?) Mansfield and Lamb Forestdale RI inspected by CEW. The year on the sword is 1864.

Back to Hauck. I looked to see if Henry Hauck (1841-1898) could have owned it. Well, he wasn't in the Cavalry. And none of his siblings were either. So Marion didn't get the sword from the Hauck side. Then the other day I was thinking... I didn't look at Marion's mother's side of the family.

Marion Hauck's maternal gandfather was Uriah Swank (1841-1902). Hellooo goldmine. He was listed as a private in the 7th Cavalry Regiment Pennsylvania. He enlisted 27 Feb 1864 and was mustered out 23 Aug 1865

To make this even better, I was recently making a list of all the cemeteries I want to visit when I go to Pa in a few weeks (you might be a genealogy addict if....) and Uriah was one of the last ones I found before deciding to look for the sword's owner again.

And now for some pictures of the sword :)