When preparing the back-story for the characters in the Shiloh Trilogy, I needed to identify a particular fictional Union regiment as the home for Jamie Harper, Joshua Featherstone, Gus Magnusson, Johnny Cooke, and the others. I wanted to identify a unit which could plausibly have participated in most of Grant’s and Sherman’s major battles not only in the time period covered by the Trilogy, but extending from the earliest battles to the end of major operations in June 1865.
I had the particular good fortune to have chosen Sergeant’s Bluff, Iowa as Harper’s home town. Using the constraint that Harper would have to join a unit from a state near his home town, this gave me the choice of Iowa, the states of Minnesota and Missouri, and the territories of Nebraska or Dakota. Of these, Iowa proved to be the best historical choice having provided regiments for nearly all of the major battles in the western theater, from the First Iowa Volunteer Infantry at Wilson’s Creek, to the sixteen regiments of Iowans in the final battle for Sherman’s armies at Bentonville. In particular, I wanted a unit which could plausibly have participated in the four battles described in the Shiloh Trilogy: Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh.
Using Wikipedia as a quick reference source, I discovered that there were just five Union regiments present at Belmont, four from Illinois and the Seventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry. For a cross-check, I consulted the Regimental Index of The Civil War Archive website operated by Mike Northway. Based on their regimental history, it seemed that the Seventh Iowa would serve quite well is a means for validating the feasibility of an Iowa unit participating in most of Grant’s and Sherman’s major battles. Back to Wikipedia and a check of the Union orders-of-battle confirmed this. So, I now knew it was feasible. But I didn’t want to use the actual Seventh Iowa because I didn’t wish to be constrained by that unit’s known, recorded history and personages. I also knew that at some time in the future I would like to write a prequel which covers the campaign in Missouri during 1861. So, I looked at the Union order-of-battle of Wilson’s Creek and discovered the First Iowa Volunteer Infantry, a ninety-day unit, whose only major battle was Wilson’s Creek – ten days prior to the unit being mustered out of service in August 1861. I had my fictional unit. What if, instead of returning to Iowa, a number of the veterans of the First Iowa re-enlisted for three years and they are permitted to retain their unit lineage? Some of the officers would need to be changed and I still wanted to avoid using real soldier’s names.
During an internet search, I had the great good fortune to find the Iowa Genealogy Web Project. In these pages, I found the initial muster rosters for every Iowa unit in the Civil War provided by Guy Logan.
Now I also had access to thousands of authentic soldiers’ names which I could (and would) manipulate to fill out the roster of fictional Iowans in Harper’s War Stories. The story of Jamie Harper and the others begins with Harper’s Donelson and continues through the Shiloh Trilogy.
