Yep. My ancestors fought for both sides.....
It truly was a Civil War.
Great grandpa Felix W. Graham was Colonel commanding the Fifth Indiana Volunteer Cavalry from late in 1862 to end of 1863. The Fifth was operational in Kentucky and east Tennesee. After Felix resigned to return home due to his wife's illness (three kids on the farm) half of the Fifth Indiana Cavalry was captured with Stoneman's raid around Atlanta on the 31st July 1863 and spent the remainder of the war at Andersonville prison. Stoneman wrote: "I want a regiment that I can depend upon, and if I had a dozen regiments like the 5th Indiana Cavalry I could whip all the cavalry in the Confederacy."
Several reports by Felix are contained in the "Official Record of the War of the Rebellion" (bit of a Yankee slant there - victors get to write the official histories
).
None of Felix's weaponry came my way.
Great Grandpa Thomas Jefferson Drane, Jr. from Bowling Green, Ky. enlisted in the 10th Tennessee Cavalry in 1861, bringing his own horse south to Tennessee to fight for the Confederacy. He was with John Hunt Morgan at the battle of Lebanon,TN-5May1862. Most of Morgan's men were able to fight their way out of Lebanon, but Thomas Jefferson Drane was taken prisoner by the Yankees. He spent the summer of '62 in Yankee prison and was recruited into the 4th Kentucky Mounted Rifles upon his 1SEP62 parole.
The 4th was commanded by Col. William C.P. Breckinridge and was merged with Robert Stoner's Battalion to create the 9th Kentucky Calvary in December of 1862.
T.J. helped drive the Yankees from the field at the battle of Perryville, Ky-8OCT62.
Poor ol' T.J. oughta stayed away from Lebanon, TN....in a raid behind Yankee lines to cut the Nashville railroad, he was captured a second time!
Shipped to the Federal military prison at Louisville, Drane was then transferred to Baltimore and then City Point, VA where he was "paroled for exchange" at Ft. McHenry 27APR63. His KY military records end here, and I haven't been able to find out what happened to T.J. for the remainder of the war. His old unit, the 9th Ky Cavalry remained intact and under the command of Breckinridge until March of 1865 and formed a portion of Jefferson Davis' escort as he fled south from Richmond.
As a young boy, I received the Enfield bayonet T.J. had sent home in 1862 when the 4th KY mounted rifles became 'proper' cavalry. I broke the durn thing playing army with it.
My Swiss great grandparents arrived in NYC in 1864 and Vincent Guentesberger was quickly drafted into Mr. Lincoln's service. I know he served in the Federal Army, but my recollection of his wartime letters written in German (they were lost when my father died) doesn't extend to his unit designation.
I have this recurring vision of both my parents' grandparents chasing around Kentucky and Tennessee shooting at each other.