Whose Blood Runs through My Veins?

Pvt. Samuel Oliver Young, CSA

When I was in the eighth grade I became interested in my ancestry. For a boy of that age there was no better discovery that to find that your great-grandfather was a soldier in the army of the Confederate States of America.  I had been a big fan of "The Grey Ghost" television series and imagined that my ancestor had ridden along with Colonel John S. Mosby, the Confederate cavalry legend.  But alas, I first found out that my great-grandfather was a prisoner of war.  And where I come from being caught and imprisoned by the enemy is hardly the stuff heroes are made of.  I sort of lost interest in the project.

Many years later while visiting a local South Carolina cemetery I noticed that my ancestor's grave had the Maltese cross of a C.S.A. veteran and a marker that said, "Company G 14th Regiment of South Carolina Infantry".  Such information would be a great start for my research.  One of the best books I found was James F. Caldwell's "A History of a Brigade of South Carolinians: Known First As Gregg's Brigade and Subsequently As McGowan's Brigade".  This book was a great help in determining which battles my great-grandfather was in.  He was at Chancellorsville where  great "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded and Gettysburg in which over 50,000 men were lost in one day.  His company was in  General A. P. Hill's Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia when they chased General George Meade's U. S. Army across the  Rappahannock  River in October, 1863.  This concerned me a bit.  Actually, it concerned me a lot!  My grandfather was born in June of 1864.  How could this be? Who was my great-grandfather? I soldiered on... I continued my research and found many interesting facts about the various battles and the heroics of the combatants. One of the most interesting sources was a collection of volumes of Confederate Military History.  These accounts of the war were written by surviving Confederate general officers of the conflict.  As you would imagine there was an inherent bias in the descriptions of the events they witnessed.  

Some of my extended family members had photographs of my great-grandfather and my grandfather. Did they look alike? Well...they were both bearded  men of Scots-Irish ancestry.

While I was studying the war in something of a chronological manner I found that on the day of Lee's surrender all Confederate soldiers became prisoners of war.  Printing presses were set up at Appomattox and POW paroles printed on the spot.  My ancestor was never in a Federal prison and was not captured in the heat of battle.  

Perhaps the most important fact discovered was in a copy of his pay record I received from the S. C. Dept. of Archives and History.  According to the pay records my great-grandfather had been at home on sick furlough during October, 1863! I know whose blood runs through my veins!