My GGG grandfather served both the confederacy and union.

[boston bean]

He was drafted to the confederacy In Georgia and in less than two years had subscripted a confederate soldier to take his place and then he joined the cavalry in Tennessee for the Union.

He was not a rich man, nor did he own slaves, I do know that. He was a farm hand/farmer in census records. I can trace records for both him and his father doing this same thing. I obviously do not know the whole story.

Nothing is clear cut in life. I am going to continue researching and find what records I can.

I own my ggg grandfathers history. I try to live my life with an openness and consider the Confederacy as traitors to our country and adherents supporting slavery. May their culture finally make its way to the dustbin of history. They are nothing that should be honored or celebrated in this country.

[luvs2sing]

1. My family history hopscotches the Mason-Dixon Line..

depending on who moved to Ohio when. Many of those statues being thankfully torn down are of my ancestors, and there is a high school in Virginia named after a notorious confederate second cousin. Anyone who could afford it owned slaves. That’s on my father’s side.

On my mother’s side, my GGG grandfather Stoner fought for the Union. I have his powder horn. His GG grandfather was a slave owner in Maryland. Another GGG grandfather had migrated from New Jersey to Kentucky, then moved to Ohio because he was against slavery.

We are all part of what we are descended from. It is our responsibility to do better. Much better.

[Merlot]

11. How are we all part of what we descended from if we don't know who they were?

I can only trace my maternal side of the family to a grandmother, nothing else is known.

Paternal side goes as far back as a grandfather & grandmother who came to America.

I can't even imagine having family members being in this country prior to 1910. It may be cool, depending on what you find. Also, like you say, responsibility.

[luvs2sing]

12. I can sympathize.

My husband’s grandparents came from Hungary and Romania in the early 1900s. It has been a long, hard slog finding any information that goes back further. After twenty years of research, I can go back several generations on a couple lines, but most are still a mystery. I keep searching..

My great-grandmother was a mystery until last year when another cousin found a DNA match. She was an illegitimate child who was abandoned and grew up in an orphanage. So I now know her mother’s name and quite a bit about her father. Again, after twenty years of research.

[mahina]

2. Mine were on both sides but were different people.

One walked from being held as a prisoner of war in Indiana all the way back to Shreveport Louisiana after the war ended and they were released.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. The Civil War caused such a break in my ancestors' history that

one group changed their name from Pemberton to Pentleton!

[grantcart]

4. Great story. Should be a movie

BTW Thailand was aligned with both sides in WWII.

When the Japanese showed up with major naval forces that was estimated would sink the Thai navy in 20 minutes the Thai government decided to join Japan in the Asian Prosperity Alliance and allowed the Japanese to move to cut the Allied lifeline to China in Burma.

The next day The Thai Embassy in DC derecognized the government in Bangkok and established a rival government in DC.

After the 2 atomic blasts the BKK government fled and the government in DC was flown in, just in time to hold a parade welcoming fellow allies led by Mountbattan who had come to arrest the previous govt and implement terms on Thailand which were forgotten after the population of Bangkok turned out to embrace the allies

During the war when the OSS wanted to parachute assets into Thailand the two governments would coordinate so that it would happen in an area w no Japanese.

[Squinch]

5. Two GG grandfathers fought, both on the Union side. One, I believe, signed up, the other was a

brand new immigrant who took a wealthy man's place in return for the money to feed and house his family for a good long time.

Both were terribly unlucky. The one ended up in Andersonville Prison, which was a huge ditch in the ground ringed by guards. It had a stream running through the middle of it, but there was no shelter and no food. The Confederacy dumped tens of thousands of Union prisoners into it. Almost no one survived. And the man whose conscription place he took never paid his family the money he owed them.

The other ended up on a Confederate prison ship, which was reportedly even worse than Andersonville. Of course he died there.

Such unimaginable suffering. And this veneration of the Confederacy is an insult to their experiences along with being an insult to every American person of color.

[Mollyann]

6. Mixed history

Both my GG grandfather and his father, my GGG grandfather served in the Confederate army. My GG grandfather was captured and imprisoned at Vicksburg. In the same family line, same surname, my 6x great grandfather and his son, my 5x great grandfather both fought in the American Revolution. The father was killed in battle. I wonder if they all liked revolution, fighting or some other reason for their loyalty to change.

[Squinch]

7. Go back far enough and everyone's history is mixed.

As I said above, both my family members were Umiom soldiers but I think my ancestors were on the wring side of the Revolution.

[LeftInTX]

9. My GGG served in the Revolution

They were North Carolianians and one of his sons was a state senator, so yeah.

My GG grandfather was too old for the Civil War, and my G Grandfather was born around 1860.

They had slaves in one of the censuses preceeding the Civil War.
My great grandfather was a laborer. He left North Carolina and eventually ended up in Florida.

His death certificate in 1924 lists his occupation as "orange grove worker"

The only thing I know about this family is what I know on paper. I don't know if my mom ever knew about the slaves. She just said her family was "poor". Her other grandmother was a teacher and my grandmother was proud of mother.. My other great grandfather was a barber. (However the paper trail also shows that side was the same way )

It seems like they went from comfortable to working class fairly quickly.

[maxsolomon]

8. Before I figured out what GGG meant

I was thinking of a FB post I saw where someone claimed William Henry Harrison was their Uncle.

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. I have ancestors on both sides of that conflict

One of my great-great-great-grandfathers lived in Washington, DC, and he enlisted in the 6th Battalion of the District of Columbia Infantry three days after Fort Sumter and served for three months (this was at the beginning of the war when everyone thought it would be over quickly, and the urgent need at the time was a defense force for DC in case Maryland ended up seceding and the capitol was suddenly deep in enemy territory). Another, in Graves County, Kentucky, enlisted in the 15th Regiment of Kentucky Cavalry (Union) for one year, from 1862-1863 (this ancestor's father owned slaves; he's on the 1850 census slave schedule with 5 slaves, and none in 1860).

On the other side, I have a g-g-g-grandfather who lived in Georgia, right in the line of Sherman's march to the sea. He didn't own slaves and was past military age (46), but he enlisted in a militia regiment in the late spring of 1864.

I have other ancestors who owned slaves in 1860; one was in Union County, Kentucky, and too old for military service, the other was in Georgia, was pastor of a Baptist church, and was also too old for military service (several of his sons fought for the Confederacy, and one was killed at Petersburg in 1864).