Review: The War of 1812 by Donald Hickey

Hickey, Donald R. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. 1st paperback ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

This book was read as part of the Military History Book Challenge hosted by Strategist's Personal Library. There aren't a lot of us participating, but hopefully the ones of us that signed up will reach our goal of 3 by November 11.

This book presented me with far more information about the War of 1812 than I'd previously known, but in spite of its depth, I felt there was more that could have been told regarding actual battles. The author does a fairly good job portraying the division between the Federalists and Republicans over the war. He does a pretty good job telling of outcomes of the war, but the part that seems to be lacking is the involvement of regular people in the conflict and how it influenced them. For example, I have an ancestor who lived in southwestern Ohio who is said to have died in 1814 in Detroit during the War. (Incidentally he'd had a son born earlier in that year.) I'd hoped to gain more information about the skirmish or battle in which he lost his life. Instead I was presented with statistical counts of injury and loss of life in various skirmishes, but not necessarily that one. The topical arrangement of the book tended to make it difficult to put together a timeline of what was happening at the same time on the different fronts or political scene. A timeline or chronology would have been helpful. In spite of its weaknesses, the author does a good job of enlightening his readers about this last (and hopefully final) conflict with Great Britain.

Related to President Zachary Taylor or Not?

There are a lot of family legends that have been handed down over the years through many of our lines. When I was growing up, I'd always heard that we were related to President Zachary Taylor through my great grandmother Laura Lucy Taylor Lantz. I must confess that when I first began to try to research the family history that I didn't quite know what I did now so my methodology was quite poor. "I knew" we were related to the President because I'd always heard it was so. [There was no concrete evidence--just the family tradition. I never for a moment doubted that we were related.] I was absolutely delighted to discover that Zachary's genealogy had been done so I began looking at the various compiled genealogies of the president. I never could figure out how Laura could possibly fit in. I decided someone must have left off a line on the tree or something. I filed it away to explore some other day.

I had developed more genealogy prowess and discrimination by the time I revisited this line. My first break on the line came through a query I placed online. I don't remember at this point if I had already discovered that Laura's father was Stephen Taylor of McLean County, Illinois at that point or not, but the gentleman who answered my query was able to tell me about Stephen and his brothers. As I began to explore Laura's immediate family, I discovered that one of Laura's brothers was named Zachary Taylor. So - we were related to Zachary Taylor, but it wasn't President Zachary Taylor.

Now . . . there is also a mystery regarding Stephen Taylor's father Stephen Taylor. This southeastern Ohio resident is said to have died in Detroit in 1814 during the War of 1812. I've found nothing to support this claim YET. (I haven't even found him on a list of troups.) There is a letter that was written by a lady in a historical society in that area to a relative from an earlier generation who was researching this. She claims that there was also a creek named after him in southeastern Ohio. I really need to take the time to work on that part of the legend because I'd certainly love to locate the creek. It's just been lower priority for me. I need to do further research on this line, but I need to make a trip to a repository with better southeastern Ohio records to do so. The counties of Washington, Athens, and Morgan are the ones that seem to bear the most significance for the family. They were in Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia) prior to this.