Back to Family Story outcomes, S22
by Colin Proctor
Hello, my name is Colin Proctor. I am from Pennsylvania meaning much of my education being from the northeast was very based on the Union. My view was formed to be very anti racist and much of what I was raised to be was accepting of all peoples and cultures. That being said it did give me a bad taste of the south in the view of the practice of slavery. This is why my discovery of my southern relatives did cause a stir within myself.
My family on both sides spent a long time in the state of North Carolina around the age of slavery and the civil war. This forced me to start wondering if my family was part of the slave trade or fought to protect it since North Carolina broke away from the Union. However as I dove deeper into the regiments and their rosters for answers I discovered a much overlooked fact in American history. The state was split and had a ton of fighting. Part of the state went hard into the protection of slavery while another part fought for emancipation under the label of Union troops on the Union began their march south toward the end of the way. The questions I was forced to try and find answers to were my family confederates, pro union, or was there a chance that they never fought at all.
In my research I dove deep into the rosters of both sides and checked dates and times. My goal with this was to line up which of my ancestors may have served and then to check their names in correspondence to this list. The ancestor I was most worried about was John Cornelius Brann who was born in 1844 and died in the 1930s making him just around the fighting age when the war broke out in 1861. His father died in 1863 which would have left him as a defender in his household as one of the heads of the family but when I looked at the rosters of the local troops no Brann was ever mentioned. This was a massive relief.
While I am relieved, there is one thing that bothers me. Based on every image I have seen of my ancestors from North Carolina they seem very well off. While this could have meant that they owned a business the reality exists that they could have participated in the practice of slavery and even sharecropping afterwards. What is crazy is that even business back then wasn’t even without flaws as a cotton mill and arms factory to fund and arm the confederacy existed in Rockingham County which opens the door that they could have made money off the troops and profits in protection of slave which is flat out immoral. While there is nothing on this that I can find, it is still alarming. There are still many questions that have been left unanswered due to lack of documents due to the fact that during the march south many areas of Rockingham and much of North Carolina was burned and destroyed in resistance fighting.
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