Long Island
By Bill Bleyer · Originally published July-August 2024 · pp. 16–17
I Civil War Soldiers Project
Robert Farrell with a photograph of Huntington Grand Army of the Republic veterans marching in the early 1900s.
t took him almost 20 years, but Robert Farrell has completed what he expected to be short-term. postretirement project: compiling a list of Civil War soldiers and sailors with a Long Island connection. Farrell’s list contains more than 6,139 names of men who were from Long Island, lived there after the war, or were buried there. “I had no idea it would take that long,” said the former aerospace manager who started with veterans from his hometown of Huntington, then expanded to all of Suffolk County, and then Nassau. “Every time I finished a version, I’d have an idea to look someplace else; then I’d have another 120 names.” Farrell’s list is available on the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center website: https://tinyurl. com/ks656b8r. Farrell said that 4,722 of the 6,139 veterans he identified served with New York volunteer regiments. He found 204 black soldiers and another 77 who served in the Navy. There were 95 who were in the regular U.S. Army or special sharpshooter regiments. Another 497 served in other states, including Nebraska. He identified 735 men who were killed or
missing in action and 581 wounded. Some 255 were captured by Confederate troops. Farrell found that 124 were buried as unknowns on the battlefield. His research turned up surprises: Long Islanders who fought for the Confederacy and others who are buried as far away as Australia. When he embarked on the ambitious research project, the now 89-year-old Huntington Town resident had been retired eight years after 26 years as a Grumman subcontract manager. “When I retired in the late 90s,” Farrell related, “I did all the things people usually do when they first retire. I did house repairs and had a three-season room added to the back of my house. I was doing my family genealogy, but I got bored.” In 2004, two years after joining the North Shore Civil War Roundtable, he decided to combine his interests in genealogy and the War by researching all veterans of the conflict who had lived in Huntington and Babylon, which had been part of Huntington. “I was looking for a hobby, and I had picked up a good number of skills doing a family genealogy, and I realized they were the same set of skills I would need to search for Civil War veterans. It ballooned and ballooned to the point where I found
1,500 people between Huntington and what is now Babylon, a part of Huntington until 1873.” With the initial project completed, boredom soon returned. Farrell decided to broaden his search to all of Suffolk County. During his initial research, Farrell had come across many veterans who lived elsewhere in Suffolk. “I just continued making a list of them,” he said. “I came up with almost 3,500 people” by the time he was done in 2015. Having come that far, Farrell decided to add Nassau County veterans to his spreadsheets. The result of Farrell’s work is what historians and genealogists from Long Island and beyond have coveted for years. “His painstaking attention to detail will greatly aid anyone researching Civil War soldiers from Suffolk or Nassau counties,” remarked Jim Gandy, librarian/archivist at the New York State Military Museum. “I’m interested in the people who did the fighting. I want to honor the ordinary soldier because I was one myself,” said Farrell, who from 1955 to 1957 was an Army private first-class serving with an anti-aircraft battery. “Finding people in foreign countries was a surprise,” he continued. “I found 137 veterans buried in Australia and three in New Zealand.” Other veterans were interred in England and Norway. The rest were buried in 38 states plus the District of Columbia. Surprisingly, Farrell located seven Confederate soldiers with Long Island connections. “I think they were already in the South” when the war broke out and remained there to enlist.
Robert Farrell looking at the regimental history of the 127th New York Volunteer Infantry in his home office.
It was truly a civil war for two Sag Harbor brothers. William Dix fought for the South as a corporal with the 5th North Carolina Infantry while his brother John L. was a private in the 6th New York Cavalry. Regis de Trobriand was one French general in the war. He lived in Bayport afterward and is buried in the cemetery of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Sayville. Farrell acknowledged his list of Long Island Civil War soldiers and sailors may not be complete. “There’ll be a few dribbling in,” he predicted.
The grave of a Long Island Civil War veteran in Huntington Rural Cemetery.
Bill Bleyer, a Civil War buff since early childhood, was a
staff writer for the Long Island daily newspaper Newsday for
Robert Farrell with some of his research books in his home office.
33 years before retiring to freelance and write five books on Long Island history and co-write Long Island and the Civil War with Harrison Hunt. He has taught maritime history at Webb Institute, the Naval Architecture College on Long Island, and journalism and economics at his alma mater, Hofstra University.
Photographs from the Original Article
Captions and credits appear in the article text as originally printed.