Several branches of the Beattie family have been told of Jonathan J. Beattie’s time in the Navy during the Civil War.  Unfortunately, none of us have any details of his experience there.   My Uncle Lloyd only documented that he believed that Jonathan “Was a Seaman in the US Navy  in the Savannah, Georgia area”.

Knowing that Jonathan’s family were all sailors back in Scotland and England, it makes sense that he served in the Navy…. but where and on what ship?

So with a little advice from some friends on the internet, I ordered the “Rendezvous Reports” index for the Civil War from the local Family History Center.  Rendezvous Report indexes are like Muster Rolls, but for the Navy.  They arrived in just about a weeks time.  I was very excited, thinking that these indexes would answer all my questions… or at least point me in the right direction on where to go next.

Unfortunately it was not going to be as easy as I had hoped.  The Rendezvous Report indexes are basically index cards with some notes typed on them.  At least they are not hand written.  The problem was that I didn’t find a direct name match.  The closest name match I could find to Jonathan J. Beattie, was John Beatty.  The encouraging news is that this John Beatty’s card was out of New York and it appears he served in the Savannah area.  So could this be him?  Maybe.

I plan to order this person’s Civil War Rendezvous Report from the National Archives.  But I have five other possible matches.  I sure don’t want to have to pay for all of them, just to do the research.  In addition, I have to do the same type of research for another person in the Navy that comes another branch of the family tree.  For that person, I found more than 15 possible matches.

Is there a better way to research this?