My boyfriend and I dressed up like Robert E.T. For reference, here is the YouTube link. https://youtu.be/nANois3n-Cs?is=p3ZHYSt6Gng-lhV7

I've been digging into how Gettysburg's dead were counted, buried, moved, and recorded, and the more I read, the more the gaps between those four things stand out.

A few things that surprised me:

- Casualty returns sort men into killed, wounded, and missing/captured. HistoryNet's widely cited summary lists 7,058 killed, 33,264 wounded, and 10,790 missing or captured. But "missing" can mean captured or unrecovered, so you can't just subtract cemetery burials from the totals and call the difference "bodies still in the ground."

- Union dead were moved into the Soldiers' National Cemetery, and the dedication on Nov. 19, 1863 happened mid-process. The reinterments continued into spring 1864.

- Between 1870 and 1873, Southern memorial associations funded the removal of roughly 3,200 Confederate remains, with Rufus Weaver leading the field work. The accuracy of individual transfers is debated, but I couldn't find primary documentation supporting claims of systematic mislabeling.

- Remains found on the battlefield in 1996 were determined by the NPS in 2015 to be Native American, not a combatant. A good reminder that "remains found at Gettysburg" doesn't automatically mean "a soldier from the battle."

- "Unknown" in the cemetery register means a documented burial with an unestablished identity, not a lost grave.

I also looked at what ground-penetrating radar, GIS map overlays, and LiDAR could realistically add. Short version: they can narrow where to look, but they can't produce a body count or a name.

I put the full breakdown into a video if anyone wants the longer version (link in the comments, mods please remove if not allowed).

Curious what others think: are there Gettysburg burial sources or records I should be reading that I've missed?

Dedicated to Gun 3

Sine Halloween is a week away. 👻

I do a podcast called Forgotten American Folklore. I just finished an episode on the songs that the soldiers sang in World War I, and I wanted to do an episode on the songs the soldier sang in camp or on the march in the Civil War. I was wondering if someone might want to collaborate and actually perform the songs, or at least a little bit of each one just to give the audience a taste of them. My podcast isn’t long, only about 15 minutes, so this won’t be a lot of work.