On Both Sides

Noted Personal Historian Kathleen Shelby Boyett had ancestors on both sides of the Civil War conflict. One ancestor walked or rode over 8,000 miles in the little-discussed New Mexico Campaign. If not for a thunderstorm, Ms. Boyett wouldn't be here to tell his story. Another ancestor was a Confederate spy who was hidden in a cave when he was injured, to protect his identity. Just like Newton Knight, who founded the “State of Jones” in Jones County, Mississippi during the Civil War, two of Ms. Boyett’s ancestors with Union sympathies found themselves trapped in Confederate-held territory. Like Knight, they kept their allegiance with the Union. Why did one of Ms. Boyett's wealthier ancestors in Alabama support the Union to the tune of over $4,100.00 worth of horses and food? What determination of spirit led to the harrowing story of the ancestor who escaped Confederate-held TN on the Underground Railroad, piloted over the mountains to Kentucky during the dead of winter, only to be captured later in the Cumberland Gap? On a humorous note, Ms. Boyett postulates at the end of the book that perhaps her ancestors' varied decisions are the reason she sometimes cannot make up her mind!