I've had the privilege of hearing Robert K. Krick speak on several occasions - most recently at the Stephen Dill Lee Institute in Northern Virginia in 2007 (pictured here). He's a great speaker and a funny man. I recently paid a visit to his website and read this rather humorous comment:"He is a well-known speaker and tour guide, ersatz Virginian, mentor to a generation of fine historians, and preservationist. His world is populated by both Krickophiles and ardent Krickophobes. Based on the last census, there are more of the former. The latter includes mostly academics and bureaucrats." (Emphasis mine. I can relate.)
Of course, you gotta love a fella that names one of his sons, Robert Edward Lee Krick.
4 comments:
Bob and I have appeared at some of the same functions, and I can testify that he's a funny man. Just don't mention James Longstreet to him -- at least not in positive terms.
Krick's done some really good work on the other issue of the day -- blacks in CSA military service -- and he finds a handful of blacks in the service records, no more.
Yes, I'm familiar with his findings. I don't dispute them. What is your response to the retort that at least part of the reason for that is poor records, missing records, etc?
well, we have a lot of good records for white Confederate soldiers, so why would their records survive while the records of the black Confederates would disappear? After all, we are not talking about segregated units, as in the US case ... we are talking about units of predominantly white soldiers with some (usually one) black enumerated.
I'm not familiar with the extent of (as a % of the whole) the number of records of Conf. soldiers that are "lost or missing." Is there a clear number?
I know I had some difficulty in researching one of my ancestors due to poor/missing records of his service.
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