The "Medal of Honor," often referred to as the "Congressional Medal of Honor," was created in 1861 by President Abraham Lincoln.  The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the highest military honor awarded in the United States and recognizes personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty. Over the past 150+ years, presidents have bestowed this honor on 3496 individuals; 78 recipients are still living. Minnesota is credited with 72 MOH recipients although a fair number of them lived here only long enough to enlist at Fort Snelling or St Anthony Falls.

Members of the Minnesota Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, are gathering biographical information on the state's MOH recipients for a digital database. We are also identifying relatives and descendants who might be invited to a ground-breaking ceremony for a Medal of Honor Memorial. I've been gathering bio information on several recipients, as well as helping other DAR members track descendants. Many of the surnames indicate Celtic origins (e.g., O'Brien, Welch, Morgan). When one looks for their descendants however, the research is all in U.S. records.

I spent several hours searching one man, John G. Merritt, born in New York in 1837. He enlisted at Fort Snelling and served with Company K of the 1st Minnesota Infantry during the Civil War. Merritt's Medal of Honor was awarded for his gallantry in action at the First Bull Run battle.  After the war he settled in the District of Columbia where he served as chief doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1892.

Those are very basic facts, and his biography for the MOH database will be much more detailed. My piece of the project was to determine if John G. Merritt had any descendants, and my first steps were fruitful, if disappointing:

a.  Findagrave included a photo of his Congressional Cemetery tombstone. Although somewhat difficult to read, the stone was also inscribed with the name of his wife, "Mary A. Merritt."

b.  U.S. Federal Census records for 1870 and 1880 showed John Merritt with a wife, Mary A., and three children - Harriet (b 1866), Leonora (b 1868) and William A (b 1872).

c.  The Congressional Cemetery has a wonderful website (www.congressionalcemetery.org/) where one can easily search interment records. While fifteen Merritts are buried at the Congressional Cemetery, only four are located in Range 72, and those four graves were contiguous as shown by the screenshot at right.

d.  I found no records of marriage for either William or Leonora/Lenora. Since they were buried with their parents, I tentatively theorized they had not married and likely had no children.

But what happened to Harriet? I searched high and low for Harriet. No marriage or death records could be found for her. No other "Harriets" buried in the Congressional Cemetery seemed to fit. No matter how I structured my queries, I came up with nothing valuable. When that happens, it's often useful to go back over the facts already found. In this case, I re-clicked "More Information" on the Congressional Cemetery interment records for the four Merritts and looked more closely at the brief death notices.

One fact of consequence: Lenora/Lennora had actually died in Canton, Ohio, on 16 Oct 1922. Why would she be in Canton, Ohio? I checked the 1920 U.S. Federal Census and didn't find her living in Ohio (or anywhere else, for that matter). Other Merritt families lived in Canton, but I couldn't confirm a connection to them. I don't know if her father, John, had brothers who'd settled in Ohio. None of the Ohio Merritts had been born in New York so they weren't close relatives. With an Ancestry.com subscription, I tend to rely solely on it for research, which is a poor practice. This day I thought to branch out and take a look at FamilySearch. Might Lenora (however her name is spelled) be living with or visiting her sister Harriet in Ohio? I'd queried "Harriet Merritt" before but not specifically for Canton, Ohio, and not on FamilySearch. When I did, BINGO!         

Finding Harriet's married name was the key to the puzzle. Yes, she and her husband - a widower named Henry Erdman - had a daughter (Ruth), but alas, all records indicate Ruth never married and died childless in 1975.

I'm 99% certain about a dead end for the line of MOH recipient John G. Merritt.

Other curious facts came to light (i.e., Henry Erdman's mother and his first wife and Harriet's mother apparently all shared the same maiden name: "Hoddinott"), but I resisted following that trail.