I received a request about 2 weeks ago. It went like this.

John W. Pierce 30 Mar 1837 - 17 Jan 1864

“Hi Eli, Thank you for your many interesting but educational stories of history. The above subject is my GGG Grandfather who was in the Civil War and lived in Gwinnett County Georgia. My Grandmother never knew anything about her family. A Mrs. Ova Warren (Demorest, GA) had this written down for my Grandmother in 1959. This is basically all the info that my Grandmother had. By looking at his death date, I believe he died in the Civil War - but no proof. I'm not sure what company or unit he was in. Do you know how I can find this or if you know someone who might be able to help me with this? Thank you for your help.”

So the first thing I did was to dive into the known records. I started a spreadsheet and tracked names, dates, service records, and pension records to help me narrow down the search. I found several John Pierce (also pearce) and also a couple of John W.s. The best source was the 1850 and 1860 census. The 1850 census has John W in the house of Lovick Pierce in Gwinnett County and the 1860 census placed him in the Chestnut Mountain portion of Hall County still living with Lovick. The 1870 census has a John W nearby in Jackson, but the birth date would have been 1832 for that particular individual. Just to be sure I tracked John W Pierce born in 1832 and found his death was after 1900 and his burial site is in Houston. That helped me exclude him from the search.

Going back to the John W Pierce born in 1837, he appears to have married a Nancy Carter between 1860 and 1861, but I have not found their marriage record yet. They did have a son named James William Carter Pierce born in July of 1861. The probably meant John did not volunteer for Confederate service early in the war. Since John disappears from the record I traced Nancy. She Married William J Phagan in 1868. I traced William’s record and he was almost a decade younger than Nancy. He also outlived Nancy and remarried about 2 years after her death. He served in the Georgia Militia for 6 months and his pension went to his second wife so there were no clues there. Nancy could not claim John W’s pension because she had remarried and thus there was no pension application for John W. Pierce.

I took a look at the 1864 Georgia Militia census. In 1864, Governor Joe Brown took a census of all men and the arms they owned in case he needed to call on them to defend Georgia. I saw Phagan and the 1832 John Pierce, but the 1837 John W Pierce was not on the list in Hall or Gwinnett. Using these clues I figured that John W Pierce had joined confederate service between 1861 and before 1864. Cross checking those dates against his name on rosters narrowed down my search.

While I was at this stage I remembered something. Lovick (john w’s dad) was the son of Wiley Pierce. I went back to my War of 1812 files and found Wiley. He was a private in the Georgia Militia in 1812 and helped build and staff Fort Harrison which was a fort built near Flowery Branch Georgia. A neat connection I thought. Anyway, back to John W Pierce.

Fold3.com provides some nice search features so I used that platform to to look for the data I desired, but all the same documents are available through the National Archives and if you use the Mormon’s familysearch.com website you can drive down to the full details. Its free and very useful to historians and genealogists. In those records I think I have found John W Pierce.

There is a record for John W. Pierce who in Company B of the 66th Georgia Infantry. The file is only 4 pages long, but some facts in the there combined with other details give me 85% confidence that this is the right guy. Of great use in developing this confidence was Daniel Cone’s book “Last to Join the Fight: The 66th Georgia Infantry.” The 66th was not created until 1863 which matches with the dates for John W. Pierce. It was also unique in that the men in the companies of the regiment were a mix of various counties from Georgia. This is in juxtaposition to early war enlistments where most companies came from the same county or community. The 66th had 13 men from Hall and 13 men from Gwinnett and overall represented about 100 counties. The unit saw extensive action in the Atlanta Campaign so the dates provided for John W. Pierce’s death match the time between Kennesaw Mountain, Peachtree Creek, and Atlanta’s battles. ( I got excited and made a research error here. John’s death date was listed as January, not July as I though so he was not present at these battles. A mistake of my fast paced research-edited 4-20-2021)

Page 2 of the service record state that John W. Pierce enlisted on July 24th, 1863 at Decatur Georgia and was mustered in at Camp Cooper-Macon, Georgia. This matches the research in Cone’s book as Company B was a diverse company of counties. Decatur would have been the main junction of roads for most points from the East so that location makes sense for a soldier from Hall or Gwinnett county.. Page 2 also states that John W Pierce was 26 years old, that matches the 1837 birth year. Page 3 and 4 of the document tell us that John W. Pierce died in 1864. We know this because those pages tell us that his name was on a registered of deceased Soldiers and that he was still in possession or was owed about $30.00. The date was 1864.

What could further increase the confidence here is to use the National Archives records via the familysearch.com microfilm record (available online for free) to comb through the actual roster for more detailed clues. the service cards on file with the national Archives are really a summary of those original documents. But those documents are thousands of pages. That research takes time. I’ll try and put up a tutorial on how to use these items in the near future..

So in conclusion I believe I would say we have found John W. Pierce’s Service. He was in Company B of the 66th Georgia Infantry and he died in 1864. The 66th served in North Georgia during the times that Pierce was listed as dying. Given the winter date of death (January 17th, 1864) and the lack of major engagements after Tunnel Hill in 1863 I would surmise he was a victim of disease as the unit was wintering in Dalton, GA. But that theory could easily change with one or two lines of text from firsthand documents. Combing through those individual returns in the National Archives could prove more fruitful.

Hopefully you all find this enjoyable and useful. And as always, send in your questions and thoughts using the “contact me” button at the top of the page.

John W Pierce Service File

Nancy Carter and William Phagans (Fagans) marriage

A 1930s Militia map of Georgia. This can be useful for matching census records to locations.

Microfilm record details from the National Archives; the roll numbers are useful when accessing the records.

This caption from John W Pierce’s summary file tells us which records his details came from.

Summary Card of John W Pierce’s service detail.

Enlistment detail. This would be a summary of a record held by the National Archives.

Records of John W. Pierce’s property collected by the CSA Quartermaster after his death. The full record would be in the Archives.

Here is the final page of his record and the date is a great find here.

Wiley Pierce (John W Pierce’s Grandfather) on a roster for Georgia Militia in the War of 1812.