Happy Accidents

Today I had planned to do other people's research.  In an attempt to do a little "cemetery stomping" (as my mom and I like to call it), my mom & I took Mookie & Baby to the Burlingame cemetery to take some pictures that were requested on www.findagrave.com - one of my favorite sites.  I picked Burlingame for 3 reasons: 1) it had the highest # of unanswered photo requests from that site 2) I wanted to scout out the Civil War veterans there and check on the possibilities for going there for an adventure I'm planning with our homeschool coop this summer (more on that later) & 3) a bunch of my husband's family was there and even if the photo requests didn't pan out, I could take digital pics of the family stones and post those on Find A Grave.
  It was way too cold to walk the cemetery with the little ones, so we mostly did a drive by and found a few of the requests, and looked at a few Civil War vets along the way.  We ended by taking the family pics.  As I surveyed the familiar stones, I noticed something I had forgotten, that grandpa John Wagner was a G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) vet.  That family has perplexed me for years.  I started with sketchy info on them, and since they moved around from NY, to Canada, to PA, finally settling in KS I didn't know where to start to find their state of origin so I gave up on extending further into the past for a while.  However, this summer I am planning on leading a bunch of our homeschoolers to help in something the Kansas State Historical Society is calling it's Sleeping Heroes project, where they document where Civil War veterans throughout the state are buried.  I have picked out a few cemeteries I would like to work on and selected a veteran from each that I will have researched to give some fun background to the kids so they can see what history can lie beneath the Company, Regiment & State and dates we'll be gathering.  I have already had success with finding that one marched with Sherman through Georgia, and another fought at the Battle of Wilson's Creek (the 1st major battle west of the Mississippi). So, when I saw grandpa Wagner, I knew I needed to revisit my efforts and make him my man for that cemetery!  I had no idea where that would lead me!
  When I attacked Ancestry.com at home, I found a pension record for him, narrowed down by the fact that he filed in Kansas, was from Pennsylvania, and applied for it himself, since he died not too long before his wife.

Ok, I had a starting place.  Then I Googled the 84th Pennsylvania Infantry and found a John Wagoner listed.  Now, the 84th Co. F was from Lycoming County but I was still in the dark as to being for sure that was him.  I was missing Grandpa John in the 1860 census so I looked him up there in that year and BINGO!  There he was with Grandma Susan and their 3 kids, so this was the correct John Wagoner!  The cool thing was that the info the Google search came up with was that he was captured at the battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863 - so much more yet to learn!!
  But wait!  There's more!  After he returned from his own expedition with Grandpa Duck & Daddy, I was sharing with Bubby what we had found.  He was anxious to find more (I love that my almost 9 year old loves this stuff!).  So, I did another Ancestry search and found the marriage record for Grandpa John and Grandma Susan!  But apparently Lycoming County, Pennsylvania records during this period are wonderfully detailed because it listed both of their parents!

  So a day of not planning to work on any genealogy of my own, turned into the biggest breakthrough I've had in a long time.  Wow!