Procedures:

1. Read the letter from Thomas Garber, a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, to his sister.

2. Through class discussion, you and your students can make a list of what they learned about Thomas Garber from reading this letter. From reading the letters, students will discover that Thomas is a soldier in the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, he needs to ride a horse to do his job, the leader of his company is C.J. O’Ferral, and he carries the flags of his regiment. Among the family and friends that he mentions in his letter are: Cousin John, Pa, Col. Frank, Ash, Mike, Ned, Gen. Jackson, Sister Seal, Ma, Kate, and Kelly.

3. Ask students what else they would like to know about Thomas Garber and ask them for suggestions as to how they can learn more about him. Explain to students that a valuable source for learning about Americans who lived long ago is the population census. Explain to students that the census is a list made of the entire United States population every ten years. In addition to people’s names, the census also records their age, occupation, place of birth, and other information. Ask students to search the Augusta County, Virginia, 1860 population census: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/govdoc/au.census1860.html

4. Students should use the census data to complete the U.S. Population Census Data on Thomas Garber's Family Chart. In the last name box, students should enter "Garber"; they should enter "Thomas" in the first name box.

5. Once they have gathered information, they can begin to interpret the primary sources and recreate the story of the Garber family. For example, after students conduct a search of the census records, they will discover Thomas was 14 in 1860, he did not own any property, he was white, and he was born in Virginia. Students can deduce that Thomas was 16 or 17 when the letters were written in 1862-1863. It is important to ask students if they know someone who is Thomas’ age. Follow-up questions may include asking students to imagine what it would feel like to be away from home fighting in a war at this age; or asking them to hypothesize why someone of this age would be fighting in a war.

6. It is important to ask students to pull together the pieces of information they have learned about Thomas Garber and to ask them what else we need to know about Thomas Garber to gain a better understanding of what life was like during the Civil War. Students may decide that to tell the story of Thomas Garber, they need to learn more about his brothers and sisters, or what his parents did for a living, and how many people lived in the Garber household.

7. To further help students recreate family life during the Civil War, have students use the census page to search for the Garber Dwelling Number and Family Number. This information will allow students to begin to answer the questions they developed on Thomas Garber. Students will discover that there were eight family members in all. He had two older brothers, one older sister, and two younger sisters; his father was a farmer who owned land (real property) and other forms of property. We can learn more about each of these family members by categorizing the census data in the accompanying table. Additionally, we can ask students to look at the list of people Thomas Garber wrote about in his letter and highlight which ones were family members. From the information found in the census search, we can also deduce that Thomas was probably writing to his sister Martha.

Center for Technology and Teacher Education, University of Virginia. This module created by Cheryl Mason and Alice Carter of the University of Virginia.