My CW ancestor drafted, exempted

[Bruce Vail]

FYI - I'm continuing my deep dive into my Civil War-era ancestors and have just learned that my great great grandfather Charles Hubert Vail (1842-1912) was drafted for war service in 1863 but granted an exemption.

The exemption was apparently based on the circumstance that he was needed to work on the family farm in North Salem, N.Y.

I'll post copies of some of documents later today...

 

[connecticut yankee]

If your info bears out that the basis of Vail's exemption was "he was needed to work on the family farm" I would speculate that 1. his father could not support the family as he was no longer living or he was unavailable to work because of sickness or infirmity and that 2. Vail was left as the sole support of his mother. Other than this scenario, I have never heard of a potential conscript being exempted for such a reason. The vast majority of young Civil War soldiers were farmers by occupation (in my town it was 80%). They all were needed to work the farm. There must be "extreme necessity" type circumstances at play here for Vail to have been exempted for non-medical reasons. I'll be anxious to see what you come up with in your next posting...

 

[Bruce Vail]

If your info bears out that the basis of Vail's exemption was "he was needed to work on the family farm" I would speculate that 1. his father could not support the family as he was no longer living or he was unavailable to work because of sickness or infirmity and that 2. Vail was left as the sole support of his mother. Other than this scenario, I have never heard of a potential conscript being exempted for such a reason. The vast majority of young Civil War soldiers were farmers by occupation (in my town it was 80%). They all were needed to work the farm. There must be "extreme necessity" type circumstances at play here for Vail to have been exempted for non-medical reasons. I'll be anxious to see what you come up with in your next posting...

Correct that the father was no longer living.

A long-ago tragedy shrouded in family secrets is that the father, David C. Vail (1806-1859), went insane and killed himself. He had been showing increasing signs of mental illness when he went missing in 1859. His body was found about ten days later in the woods near his farm He had hanged himself using strips of bark from a sapling.

Young Charles Hubert was left to manage the farm as best he could.

 

[Bruce Vail]

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I can't make out the words on the fourth line....

 

[Bruce Vail]

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Sorry, but I couldn't figure out how to rotate the image.