Joe was a contributor to findagrave and had placed 233 photos of mostly Civil War Generals on this site. His goal was to photograph the 425 CSA and 583 USA Civil General's graves. He took photos of well over 800 of the 1,008 Civil War Generals and loved travelling to cemeteries to find new ones. He was most proud of finding the Civil War General buried in Canada, John Curtis Caldwell, USA, in New Brunswick, Canada.

Joe was born in South Charleston, WV and lived most of his life in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia, although he lived in California for a few years, and attended San Jose State College. He was a engineering technician for Columbia Gas Transmission Company, retiring in 1997 after 35 years service. Joe's hobby and passion was the Civil War, particularly the lives of the Civil War Generals. He spent years researching the gravesites of all the Civil War Generals - both Confederate and Union - then travelling to the gravesites and photographing them. He drew wonderful maps detailing how to find the graves and was very generous in giving them to fellow gravers so they could find the graves as well. Through his hobby, he met and corresponded with many people throughout the U.S. who had similar interests, and it gave him great delight to share his photographs and information with everyone he met. He contributed to several authoritative books on the Civil War, an accomplishment of which he was very proud, and was very active in the Kanawha Valley Civil War Roundtable. Joe was a voracious reader and amassed a library of nearly 400 books on the Civil War, mostly biographies of the Generals since that was his particular interest. Joe's wife, Pam, donated his books and his over 3,000 photos to the West Virginia Department of Culture and History as the Joseph H. Ferrell Civil War Collection.

Joseph Ferrell's contributor page