My husband descends from a long family line of seven generations in western North Carolina. Inevitably during the Civil War, he had ancestors who fought for the South. None of these men had slaves. Most of them were poor farmers, itinerant preachers, bootleggers, store keepers, ordinary citizens.
They fought for their state, most likely not too concerned about the slavery issue, but their state was fighting so they served. My husband had a total of 51 ancestors who fought, some were his direct line, some were collateral lines of cousins and uncles. Some of them were captured and spent time in Union prisons, some went AWOL to return home and plow their fields, bringing in harvests, providing for their families.
So we arrive in the present century. There are several hereditary organizations, such as Sons of American Revolution, Daughters of the American Revolution, Order of the First Families, United Daughters of the Confederacy. Why do we join those organizations?
Is it to promote old feelings about the Civil War and the Revolutionary War? Is it to honor our ancestors who, for whatever reason, served and fought for this country, perhaps maybe not on the side we favor now, but because their families were threatened?
Given the fact that my husband had so many ancestors who served in the Confederacy, he wanted to honor them by joining the Sons of Confederate Veterans. To join any hereditary organization there are several steps that are involved and require a lot of research. You must prove your relationship to the veteran or the soldier or the family, depending on the organization.
To prove that relationship means showing that you have a direct line in your family tree to the specific person. In the case of the Daughters of American Revolution, you are going back to the 1700’s; for Confederate organizations, it is to the mid 1850’s. Sometimes the records are very difficult to track, or if you are lucky in the case of the DAR, your ancestor might already be in the records and you just have to connect a few generations to the revolutionary patriot.
Many times records are not readily available and require a bit more digging. In my husband’s case, his connection to the Civil War was through his great grandfather, so the research did not present as difficult a task as for the Revolutionary War.
Once he was able to join, he was involved in cleaning the highway with the group, selling onions to help with local museum in North Carolina, but their most important task is finding unmarked Confederate graves and placing headstones. The headstones are available through the Federal government after much paperwork which is required. He is proud of his ancestors, but now he feels somewhat ashamed because of the negativity toward confederacy and the Civil War. What should he do? Sometimes it is best just to accept what the research proves.
Many of these records can be found in databases such as Ancestry, Fold3, and FamilySearch.
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