Information
Sheet
R Konenszewski family.
208 Papers, 1816-1862.
Two folders,
photocopies.
These are baptismal and educational
certificates, medical records, and immigration papers of Johann Konenszewski
and his sons, Ladislaus and Edmund.
There is also a Civil War letter by Lieut. Edmund Konenszewski, November
1861, and a diary by Maj. Ladislaus Konenszewski, February—July 1862. Both men served in the 26th Missouri
Infantry in Gen. John Pope’s Army of the Mississippi.
Johann Konenszewski brought his family to
St. Louis, Missouri, around 1850. Their home had been at Sasov in what is now
the Ukraine Republic. The territory was under Austrian rule from
1774 to 1919, reverted to Poland
in 1919, and was ceded to the Soviet Union in
1945. Family papers from the homeland,
written in German and Latin, include various certificates of achievement and
personal record. Pre-Civil War papers
from the United States
include correspondence in 1852 with the Austrian Consulate General in New York, the enrollment
certificate in 1855 of Johann Konenszewski in the St. Louis Grays, a local
militia to which his sons also belonged, and eulogies delivered upon Johann’s
death in 1859.
When the Civil War began in Missouri, the Konenszewski brothers sent their sisters
and mother to safety with relatives in Minnesota. Edmund’s letter to his sister in November
1861 contains general family news concerning the displacement. The brothers joined Col. George Boardman
Boomer's 26th Missouri Infantry.
Ladislaus was commissioned a major on the regimental staff; Edmund, the
younger brother, became a lieutenant in Company F. Assigned with the regiment to the Army of
the Mississippi, the Konenszewskis served in
the campaigns against New Madrid and Island Number Ten in southeastern Missouri, and in the operations against Fort
Pillow, Tennessee, and Corinth, Mississippi. Edmund contracted typhoid fever during the advance
on Corinth and was left at Farmington.
He died there on 3 June 1862.
Ladislaus remained in the army only a
short time following the death of his brother, resigning his commission in
October 1862. He returned to his home in
St. Louis,
where he lived until his death in 1904.
His diary of service with the 26th Missouri provides a good record of the regiment’s
activities for the period from February to July in 1862. The daily entries contain observations on
the generalship of the army, the regimental officers, the death of Edmund
Konenszewski, and the siege of Corinth. The last entry was written following the occupation
of Ripley, Mississippi, on 3 July 1862.
The collection also includes a letter by
John T. Stites, a Federal soldier and grandfather of the donor. Stationed at Patterson, Missouri,
with the 30th or 31st Missouri Infantry, Stites wrote to
his wife from camp on 24 October 1862.
He described the assembly of what became the Army of Southeast Missouri
and speculated on an advance into Arkansas.
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