I never have been just too sure about some details of our family. Especially if I’m trying to figure out relationships that involve folks a couple of generations back.

My mother’s people were long-time settlers in East Tennessee, and some of them came and went, to and from Virginia, a few times before they finally decided to stay.

My grandmother was a Steel; her father married a Beal. His sister married Grandma’s brother. And that brings us to my grandmother’s double first cousin who told me this story.

In the hills of East Tennessee, during the Civil War, as I suppose in any area that is enduring war, there were not just two groups fighting. There were the Yankees, the Rebels, and then there were the Bushwhackers that everybody had to be on the lookout for.

The father of the Beal family up on the hill and an older son were both in away in the army. There was a young son still at home. He was about 14 and itching to be off to battle. The family had forbidden him to go. He was too young. He was needed at home. Two men of the family were already off somewhere fighting. No, he mustn’t go.

But he did. Ham (short for Hamilton) ran off to …? What? Adventure? Do his bit as “man”? who knows now what he must have been thinking.

Cousin Jay was a complete Southern gentleman. He never called any of these folks Yankees or Rebels or Bushwhackers. I’m not sure which side Ham joined up with, but it didn’t last long. One day the family received word that Ham had been caught along with some others and was being held in the county jail in Rogersville. He was to be hanged at dawn the next day.

Long before dawn, the family sent their servant to town with the buckboard wagon to bring home Ham’s body.

Up in the day,as they waited on the front porch, they could see a cloud of dust being kicked up down the road toward town. They stood, trying to get a better look, and after a bit they could see their own wagon with the poor horse being driven at an awful pace and with an awful clatter.

The servant was standing, whipping the horse, and shouting, “Ham’s out and mounted! Ham’s out and mounted!”

The, I think, bushwhackers (though Cousin Jay would never say exactly who) had come through during the night, raided the jail, releasing all the captives.