Page 58 - Armstrong Bloodline - ebook_Neat

Chapter 7 –

Alva David and Mary Caroline

(Cotton) Armstrong & Family

(Original Signature) 19 year old Alva D. Armstrong upon his
Civil War Army enlistment - 1862

Over the years, my great-grandfather Alva had become something of an enigma; an appealing specter,

vaguely visible but always just beyond my grasp. Unlike his brothers Jerome and Rolla, conventional
genealogical sources initially revealed little as to his presence or passage. Perhaps it was his seeming obscurity
and tragically early death that so attracted my interest. What kind of a person was he and what happened to
him?

He certainly never attained the social standing of his father or brothers, yet he was the only male member of
the family that participated in one of the greatest conflicts in American history. It was also clear that his older
brother Jerome was proud enough of his younger brother to mention him in his 1909 biography published in
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the History of Page County. He was certainly no coward as, according to this article, he not only fought for the
Union and was wounded, but unlike thousands of other men who avoided active participation or ran away
from active combat, he enlisted a second time and fought again under William Tecumseh Sherman on his
famous March to the Sea.

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What was it like living in the mid 19 century? In 1848 when his family left Vermont for Michigan, young Alva
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was barely six years old. At that time his family was composed of his mother, Sarah and his father, Dr. David
W. Armstrong, his older brother Jerome, older sisters, Sarah and Ellen, his younger brother, Rolla, and another
sister, Olive, who was less than two years old at the time. The trip from Vermont must have been a great
adventure for the young boy who was introduced to a new world that must have seemed very different from
West Haven, Vermont where he had been born and lived until that time. Did he enjoy living in his
grandfather's log cabin on a farm a few miles north of the town of Parma? What did he think of the frontier
town of Parma when he moved there a year or so later?

Little is known of his early life in Michigan. I have seen his signature and samples of his calligraphy, so I know
that he must have attended school in the Parma area, or was at least tutored by his parents. It is likely that he
was not an eager student, as the 1860 Census shows him living separately from his family and working as a 17
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year-old laborer. His mother had died when he was only 13 or 14 (1856), and three years later, his father
had remarried. Whether this means that his relationship with his father was a tenuous one is not known, but
there are clues that hint that he and his father did not always see things in the same light.

As he neared adulthood, the secession of the southern states and the inception of the Civil War, brought about
changes on a nationwide scale that would affect thousands of young men of his era. Tales of great movements
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shook the land. The young men of the North read of marches, sieges, and conflicts. Village gossip centered

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