Southern past

It came as an email. 

"I am writing a book on the 20th N.C. Infantry and noticed you have an ancestor who fought in the 20th N.C."

Some Web site I had searched for information.

The author wanted to check facts.

There it is, my Southern past. 

Confirmed by a man writing a dry, dusty book to be sold in all those bookstores at Civil War battlefields, tucked in with the DVDs of Ken Burns' Civil War series and medallions honoring some long ago conflict to tack to your hiking stick.

I am suddenly proud of those hours spent studying the past.  

I can talk of the ancestor he is interested in, Lorenzo Todd, a corporal in the 20th N.C. Or, his cousin, Isaac McDaniel Todd, my great-great grandfather, in a brigade of the 2nd N.C. Cavalry. Or, I can go back farther to Nicholas Prince, my ancestor from Horry County, S.C., who fought in the Revolutionary War. 

He is interested in Lorenzo Dow Todd from Columbus County, N.C. (My great uncle Dow Todd, named for him, was a big man with a flat top and suspenders who kept trying to get me to try chewing tobacco in those wonderful years before 10.)

Lorenzo, a hero, was the also namesake for my great grandfather, Lorenzo Lamar Todd, a Baptist preacher in Columbus and Bladen counties.

We exchange emails. I confirm what he mostly knows. Lorenzo fought along with the rest of the 20th in virtually every battle in that terrible war, including Gettysburg, and surrended with Lee at Appamatox Court House. After the War, he moved to Georgia, where he died a very old man and with 10 children, whose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are all my distant cousins. 

I am removed from this past. Cotton mills, dusty farms, battles and skirmishes with British and Yankees. But it is in there somewhere.

The Todds are talkers and quick to get a temper up, so they say. My grandmother on both sides, mom and dad, were Todds. One line from North Carolina, the other Todds from South Carolina, like the Princes.

The Princes are more subtle. Prone to plowing straight lines.

The Powells are mixed bag.

Like me.