William Flood, 3rd great grandfather, married to Delia Angell, was a Civil War soldier in the Iowa 32nd Infantry. He registered after Governor Kirkwood on July 9, 1862 made a proclamation calling for 300,000 Iowa men to join the war effort. At HathiTrust in the Roster and record of Iowa soldiers in the war of the Rebellion, Volume 5 (William’s info is on page 57) there is a 10-20 page description of the the soldiers’s battles and movements. They walked from Iowa to Nashville, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama. They walked in soldier’s uniforms with their supplies on their backs.

Today in Iowa it is 90 degrees, heat index 104. I carried out the garbage/recycling in a tank top, flip flops, shorts with no gear on my back. I broke a sweat- WTF? Were these ancestors of mine a different species? How in the world did they do what they did, everyday.