MetaChat - All my ancestors were cowards! Or prescient. Or both.

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27 February 2008

All my ancestors were cowards! Or prescient. Or both. On a whim, I went to my state's historical archive website. They've added a searchable database that contains the records of all the state residents who served in the ~~Unholy War of Northern Aggression~~ ~~War Between the States~~ Civil War.→[More:]

I have a fairly unique last name, and I know from doing my father's family's geneology that my forebears have been here since before the state became a state, and that everyone here with my last name is somehow a relative. So I figured I'd see if and when they served in the Army of the Confederacy.

Guess what?

Every single one of them (there were six or seven) was a deserter! Some even rose to officer rank before deserting! Each file had notes appended like, "Now farming in Springville, refuses re-enlistment" or "whereabouts unknown, seen leaving his regiment with two horses".

Yay, us! Deserters and horse thieves!

This kind of explains the family motto:"Fuck it, I quit."

post by: BitterOldPunk at: 11:28 | 12 comments

Oops. In my haste, forgot to utilize the "more inside" feetchur.

Hope me, modz!

posted by BitterOldPunk 27 February | 11:29

Ha! My father's last name is a common name, but with a somewhat unusual spelling, that is more often seen in Scotland, England, and Canada than in the US. Our family mythology says that our anscestor was a draft-dodger who escaped to Canada either during the Civil War and changed his name. Of course, we're all a bit too lazy to actually do any research on the matter :)

posted by muddgirl 27 February | 11:34

Heh.

If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't unusual at all.

Maybe it's a credit to their smarts and ability to bail out of a totally losing situation. I mean, they read the writing on the wall. Why risk their skin?

Hey, you might even owe your existence to the fact that they had enough foresight not to get killed for a lost cause, thus living to reproduce and lay the groundwork for the Old_Punk family of the future.

posted by Miko 27 February | 11:35

SNORT. So much for your family's Southern Pride, right? It could have been worse. They could have switched sides, and then all your Confederate cred would be lost!

posted by lleachie 27 February | 11:51

This is true.

A very, very high percentage of the men who marched off to war in Confederate uniforms did not come back.

I remember reading somewhere that something like 25% of the Southern white male population of military age died in the war. I don't know how accurate this figure but it was A LOT of people, no matter how you slice it.

posted by jason's_planet 27 February | 11:55

What astounded me was how easy it was for them to get away with it. "Refused re-enlistment"? I'd like to have heard that conversation:

Confederate officer: Now, Thomas, come on out. You know you ain't served your time yet.

Thomas: Git offa my land!

CO: Come on, Thomas. You'll be fine. We're just goin' on up to Antietam for a bit.

Thomas: I ain't gonna go! Git offa my land afore I shoot yuh!

CO: Well, fine then. But this WILL go down on your permanent record. (Leaves)

Thomas: Damn, if I'd a known it'd be that easy, I'd a left months ago....

posted by BitterOldPunk 27 February | 12:02

One of my distant uncles was in the Nazi army in WWII.

He deserted, and I have never been able to find out whether it was relatively early, or whether it was late, when it was a lost cause, and guys just went home, if they could.

But even to the end, I imagine the consequences for being caught deserting the Third Reich were rather stern.

posted by danf 27 February | 12:30

My dad discovered a long-lost relative he knew nothing about solely because he was going through his recently deceased mum's stuff and found a book with a family name he'd never heard of. His parents would have known about him, but for some reason never mentioned him. After a few months' investigation, we discovered that said relative died in the closing months of World War One. We then discovered that he has a grave in one of the military graveyards in France and have been over to see it.

Weird to think that, if my dad hadn't been paying attention when clearing out stuff, we'd have never known about this person/

posted by TheDonF 27 February | 13:10

My dad's family is like that, BoP, "screw this, we're outahere!" That's what got his mother's family from the middle of Mexico to here, and his father's family off the Indian reservations and into "mainstream" citizenship.

The bad part is that it's left that part of the family almost without roots or stories, except from one generation back.

We can trace my mom's family to Ireland and Germany (1830's or therabouts), and their stories are similar - get the heck out of dodge, it ain't worth it.

posted by lysdexic 27 February | 14:40

One of my direct ancestors was fighting on the Confederate side, was captured, and went to a Union jail up north, whereupon his Yankee mother found him and retrieved him. Heh.

There's an old family story on my mom's side that when Sherman came thru my ancestors fed him (or one of the officers, who knows) and he then hung his hat up on the porch and left it. Their property was untouched as the army came thru pillaging.

This might just be fictional but it's still a story.

posted by bunnyfire 27 February | 15:46

I've got two completely different spectrums in my family. On my mother's mothers' side, which has been researched back to the 1600's, we have genteel folks, from England, including ladies-in-waiting to royalty, as well as the very well-to-do. They emigrated to Canada, and engineered the Canadian railroad.
But on my father's side...let's just say, when the government was handing out land to people of Cherokee Indian descent (to make up for what was done to them), my father's Black Irish ancestors lied and said they were Cherokee. They were poor farmers, raging alcoholics, with quick tempers. I sometimes wish I knew more about that side of the family, but it's better to stay away.

posted by redvixen 27 February | 19:52

This kind of explains the family motto:"Fuck it, I quit."

I may be related to your family in that case.:)

But, yeah, why fight for a cause that you don't believe in? If there were more people who refused to go to Iraq think of the impact that would've had.

*cheers horse thieves and deserters*

posted by hadjiboy 28 February | 02:34

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