Figure out MidnightBlue's avatar! Win frubals! (virgin, America)

[Storm]

All four of your great-grandfathers?

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by Storm

All four of your great-grandfathers?

We have a winner!

They are:
Jeremiah James Barrett (ca. 1859-1909), a painter and auxiliary policeman in Milwaukee. (The one looking off to your left.)
William Kleist (1882-1941), a teamster in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. (The one with the receding hairline.)
Joseph Leonard Gouge (1844-1892), a teamster and farmer in Mitchell County, North Carolina. (The one in the Union uniform)
John Thomas McGuire (1886-1968), a preacher in Linville, North Carolina. (The one with the hat.)

John was the only one I ever met. He was married three times and outlived all of them; he joined the church of each of his wives when he married her, and was a Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal preacher, in that order. He had eight children and four step-children. His third marriage caused a scandal because his wife had been divorced. He outraged his daughter when he told he wanted to be buried next to his third wife and not next to my great-grandmother; she replied, "If that's the way you feel about it, my mother doesn't want you buried next to her!"

Frubals will be awarded once to everybody who participated, and -- in due time as the system allows -- four times to Storm.

[Storm]

Coolness!

[BUDDY]

Originally Posted by MidnightBlue

We have a winner!

They are:
Jeremiah James Barrett (ca. 1859-1909), a painter and auxiliary policeman in Milwaukee. (The one looking off to your left.)
William Kleist (1882-1941), a teamster in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. (The one with the receding hairline.)
Joseph Leonard Gouge (1844-1892), a teamster and farmer in Mitchell County, North Carolina. (The one in the Union uniform)
John Thomas McGuire (1886-1968), a preacher in Linville, North Carolina. (The one with the hat.)

John was the only one I ever met. He was married three times and outlived all of them; he joined the church of each of his wives when he married her, and was a Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal preacher, in that order. He had eight children and four step-children. His third marriage caused a scandal because his wife had been divorced. He outraged his daughter when he told he wanted to be buried next to his third wife and not next to my great-grandmother; she replied, "If that's the way you feel about it, my mother doesn't want you buried next to her!"

Frubals will be awarded once to everybody who participated, and -- in due time as the system allows -- four times to Storm.

Thanks, you put me over 100K. Question for you though. Why is Mr. Gouge in a union uniform if he was from North Carolina?

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by BUDDY

Thanks, you put me over 100K. Question for you though. Why is Mr. Gouge in a union uniform if he was from North Carolina?

Union sympathies were very common in the Appalachian region; many yeoman farmers found little reason to identify with the wealthy, slaveholding planters of other regions of the South.

My great-grandfather and his brother were actually taken forcibly from their mother's farm and drafted into Confederate service, but deserted and joined the Union army. Many of their cousins had the same experience.

One of my favorite family stories is of my third-great-grandmother (my grandfather was much older than my grandmother, so the generations don't jibe very well), Hannah Mariah Carson Hicks, who is remembered as a tough old bird. Her husband was off in Union Service, and the Confederate Home Guard came looking to take her teenage sons, who were in hiding. The Home Guard told her they'd burn her and her baby alive if she didn't tell where her sons were, and Hannah said, "Do what you're gonna do; I don't know nothin'." (She survived the war.)

[Don Penguinoini]

Hail Lord Bill!

[Buttercup]

John Thomas McGuire (1886-1968), a preacher in Linville, North Carolina. (The one with the hat.)


He was movie star good looking.....

[BUDDY]

Originally Posted by MidnightBlue

Union sympathies were very common in the Appalachian region; many yeoman farmers found little reason to identify with the wealthy, slaveholding planters of other regions of the South.

My great-grandfather and his brother were actually taken forcibly from their mother's farm and drafted into Confederate service, but deserted and joined the Union army. Many of their cousins had the same experience.

One of my favorite family stories is of my third-great-grandmother (my grandfather was much older than my grandmother, so the generations don't jibe very well), Hannah Mariah Carson Hicks, who is remembered as a tough old bird. Her husband was off in Union Service, and the Confederate Home Guard came looking to take her teenage sons, who were in hiding. The Home Guard told her they'd burn her and her baby alive if she didn't tell where her sons were, and Hannah said, "Do what you're gonna do; I don't know nothin'." (She survived the war.)

I had a great great grandfather who kind of went through the same thing. He was a share cropper in Louisiana, and somebody came along and took him away to join up. He was captured and subsequently joined the north. A short time later he was captured by the South. He deserted and went back to the North because they paid more. I guess loyalty only runs as deep as your pocket when you are a starving sharecropper with a wife and two children in Louisiana.

[MidnightBlue]

Originally Posted by Buttercup

He was movie star good looking.....

Here he is fifty years later:

Scary, huh? But then, look what happened to Marlon Brando.