Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

In 1915, 50 years after Appomattox, the London Branch of Civil War Veterans counted 115 members. The list can be found in Harvard’s Houghton Library, and it provides the names, addresses, ages and length and general location of the service of all its members. One man, listed only as E. Munro, was reported as being 105 years old. Presumably, there were many other veterans who made their way to Britain after the war, who had either died by 1915 or had never bothered to join the branch.

Two years later, when the first American soldiers on their way to France were arriving in Britain, they were met with a parade. Several Civil War veterans joined the procession. Michael Hammerson, of The American Civil War Round Table UK, writes that “one soldier, writing home to his mother, related that he was in one of the first regiments to pass in front of the King and Queen, and that their escorts were United States Civil War veterans.”

The proximity of those two generations in that moment is striking. Did they speak to each other? If so, what did they say? In popular memory, two generations are normally seen as worlds apart: Generals Ulysses S. Grant and John Pershing could not have been more different in their demeanor and world views, and yet there they were, represented, marching side by side.

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The purpose of the branch was straightforward enough. As the minutes of a meeting in Sept. 20, 1910, relate, it existed to promote “Fraternizing, Fellowship, Camp Fire Tales, Lower Deck yarns, Jabbering and Singing those long ago Battle Hymns. Thanking God for sparing mercies. Our beautiful brass band playing Sherman’s March, Star Spangled Banner, We are coming, Father Abram, and 300,000 more, while we all stand up and the Chaplain thanks God we are yet alive.”

As Steve Tuffnell, a post-doctoral student in history at Oxford, pointed out, the veterans reappeared a year later, during a celebration on July 4, 1918. The event, held at the Central Hall in Westminster, featured Winston Churchill, then the minister of munitions, and “a large contingent of American Civil War Veterans,” according to The Times of London. Churchill spoke of the relation between Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence, and how, because of that, “We therefore feel no sense of division in celebrating this anniversary. We join in perfect sincerity and in perfect simplicity with our American kith and kin in commemorating the auspicious and glorious establishment of their nationhood.”

Related Civil War Timeline An unfolding history of the Civil War with photos and articles from the Times archive and ongoing commentary from Disunion contributors. Visit the Timeline »

Much of what we know about the London veterans is thanks to the organization’s head, John Davis, a scrupulous note-taker and self-promoter. In one of the group’s publications, David celebrated the London veterans in verse: “’Tis true in dwindling numbers each succeeding year, / More grey, more bent, more tottering, as each others hearts we cheer.” Alongside the poem he printed a photograph of Abraham Lincoln, and beside it Davis himself, with a large white beard. In another image, he holds the wheel of a ship that has inscribed on it “All The Storms Will Soon Be Over / Nearing The Harbour of Heaven and Home.” And in a third photo, he is shaking the hand of a fellow veteran, Monroe, on Monroe’s 105th birthday.

Tracking down the other members is a bit harder. With a little research and luck, a few names become faces: Maurice Wagg was born in New Hampshire, was still married to his first wife when he married his second, served in the Navy on the Rhode Island and apparently saved individuals off the Monitor when it sank on Dec. 30, 1862.

Others linger just beyond in the temporary dark. One member was named William Askew, but there are a frustrating number of men with that name in the National Archives. And it seems odd that there’s little evidence of a man as uniquely named as “R Schroobree.”

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But there is one mystery that seems, for now, unlikely to be solved: in one photograph, one member of the London Branch of U.S. Civil War Veterans appears to be a Sikh.

None of the surnames that appear on the membership list appear to be Sikh. Turnell said: “There’s a window of possibility that the Sikh from the photo joined later – or even only signed up for the march in 1917. There’s the additional layer that he may have Anglicized his name on arrival in the U.S. or even while in Britain, so he could be hidden in plain sight as it were.” At least 50 South Asians fought in the Civil War, as the historians Francis Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen have noted, typically with Anglicized names like John Burns, Henry Bell and Peter Blake.

Eventually, the notes from Davis trail off in the archives, and presumably the London branch shrank as its membership died, though there is no record of when its last member passed away. But even if the group’s history is shrouded, it deserves to be remembered, if only as a marker for how long, and how far afield, the legacy of the Civil War spread.

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Evan Fleischer is a writer in New York City.

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