I appreciate both of the posts. I have similar stories as Rick, except my ancestors fought for the Union out of Pennsylvania. Old Men Make Wars for Young men to Fight. Anita >From: Rick Paddock <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history > <[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: Loving the slaves (Sidebar) >Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:53:33 -0600 > >Loretta wrote: > >"There is in the Bedford County TN Heritage History book published within >the last five years a story of a black man who followed his white slave >owner into war. The soldier was a Confederate. When he was wounded his >black >servant cared for him until he could travel and took him home to >recuperate. >The white family for whom he had been a slave was left landless and >penniless by the war...To be sure, the world is full of meanness. But it is >also full of kindness." > >------------------------- >The Civil War devastated families, and my ancestors in Henderson CO, TN, >were not spared. One of them was a woman of means before the War but >destitute during and after. One of her brothers was killed in fighting in >Georgia. The family had hardly assimilated this news when word came that >another brother lay languishing in a primitive field hospital in Vicksburg. > >Gritty and determined, she gathered provisions, a feather mattress, her >grandmother’s quilt, and put them into a wagon. All the horses on her farm >had been commandeered earlier by General Forrest, leaving her with one mule >and a cow to pull her wagon. But that didn't stop her. She enlisted an >elderly member of the the freedmen who had stayed on out of loyalty and >served as houseman, and set off for Vicksburg, some 500 miles to the >south-to bring her brother home. > >There were no road maps of course, ands no inns. Most roads were little >more >than dirt tracks, and dangerous ones at that. The farm people they met >along >the way were not much better off than she and the freedman. At one point, >they spent the night with a family who had a new baby. The were overjoyed >to >swap a mule for the cow and her milk and the two could make much better >time >with a team of mules. It was a long, arduous journey, filled with horror >and >comedy, tales too numerous to recount and perhaps lost over time but >against >the odds, they finally reached Vicksburg. They found her brother still >alive >and nursed him until he was strong enough to travel. They brought him him >home to the farm. She never would have succeeded without this wonderful man >s help. > >NOT a historian either but addicted to genealogy. > >Regards, Rick _________________________________________________________________ PC Magazine’s 2007 editors’ choice for best Web mail—award-winning Windows Live Hotmail. http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_mini_pcmag_0507