'MY SOUTHERN HERITAGE'

Born and raised in the Heart of Dixie, I grew up proud of my Southern heritage; especially the role my family had in fightin’ for the Confederacy during the War Between the States (known to you Yankees as the American Civil War).

My Papaw Pittman used to tell of his great-great-grandfather Henry Sinyard, a big redheaded man, who had been killed during the War, fightin’ up at Nashville. Now, don’t you just know that that set a young boy’s head to spinnin’? I was so proud to hear that! I had an ancestor that fought in the War!

It wasn’t until as an adult, many years later, that I found out, while researching my family’s history, that Papaw’s great-great-grandfather Henry C. Sinyard, Jr. had indeed been a soldier… IN THE UNION ARMY! And, as if that tweren’t bad enough, another great-grandfather/ancestor of mine Matthew Davis Harbison had served right alongside of him in the same unit. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!! Not one, but two Yankees in my family!! OH, THE SHAME!!
Then, after a bit more diggin’, I come to find out that the rosters of the 1^st Alabama Cavalry, USV (The ONLY Alabama unit to fight for the Union), were just plumb full of my kinfolk; Harbisons, Calverts, Davis’, Tuckers, fathers, sons, brothers, cousins; they was all kin. I was flabbergasted.

Where my kin on the Jennings’ side of the family had been slave owners from the Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi and had supported secession; the Pittman side of my family were non-slave owning, small farmers from the hill country of northern Alabama who had felt a greater loyalty to the Union that their grandparents had fought to create than to the newly-formed Confederacy.

While my Jennings ancestors had readily joined their neighbors in enlisting to repel the Northern invaders; my ancestors on the Pittman side of the family, wishing only to be left alone by both sides, had finally been forced to flee their homes to avoid forced conscription, resulting in their eventual enlistment in the Federal Army.

          After the initial shock of the discovery wore off, though, I dug around a bit more and soon came to appreciate the many similarities between the two branches’ hardships, and surprisingly, it became somewhat easier to accept this new revelation about my family, because by the War’s end, both branches of my family had suffered equally while fighting for what each believed in... basically, the defense of their homes and the right to live in the manner in which they chose.

Their homes were destroyed, their livestock confiscated, and their fortunes gone in the blink of an eye; many of the menfolk who had gone off to war never returned, leaving their families unprotected and literally starving; those that did return bore scars and suffered from sicknesses that could never heal. Both families had to start from scratch all over again, having lost, in just a few years, that which had taken their whole lives to amass. What a senseless waste… for all involved.

Nowadays, I’m still just as proud of the role my family had in fightin’ during the War Between the States. Only, now, it’s with a new-found appreciation of my true Southern Heritage.