Some Wore Blue and Some Wore Gray

A friend recently said, "I've never been more pessimistic about our country. We seem to see one another as the other - the other religion, the other race, the other ethnicity, the other political party."

I agree that we live in a trying time . . . but there was an earlier period when Americans became so estranged from one another that those in the South saw no valid reason to remain in a united America.
I'll tell you about some direct and collateral ancestors connected to us by blood and DNA, who fought in the American Civil War. But, first, listen to "Two Brothers" by The Weavers HERE

You may have read the series "Gone for a Soldier" that Pat Raney penned about our 2nd great-grandfather Everett Rainey (1844-1891) and his military service with the 91st Indiana Infantry Regiment, fighting to preserve the Union. The series begins HERE. He fought at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the Siege of Atlanta, the Battle of Lovejoy's Station, the Battle of Spring Hill, the 2nd Battle of Franklin, the Battle of Nashville and the Carolinas Campaign. Despite the family's southern roots in southern Kentucky, I believe they felt the Union must be preserved. Not all southerners fought for the Confederacy.

Powder horns we believe Everett Rainey carried during the Civil War (or so our grandfather claimed), now under Pat Raney's stewardship.

The Rainey family could later boast, were they so inclined, to having numerous veterans. William W. Heath (1838-1892), who married Everett's sister Elizabeth (1827-1924), served with the 42nd Indiana Infantry Regiment, fighting at Stones River, Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain and Atlanta. William H. Mason (1844-1895) married sister Serena Susanna Rainey (1843-1923) after war's end in December 1865 (a week after Everett married Nancy Ann Dougan), also served with the 42nd. John Miller (1842-1907), who married sister Sarah Rainey (1840-1881) in 1864 and Robert Barrett (1839-1900), who married sister Cordelia Ann Rainey (1842-1920) in 1870, both served throughout the war with the 24th Indiana Infantry Regiment, which saw action at the Battle of Shiloh and the siege of Vicksburg. Everett's brother-in-law Peter Dougan (1845-1922), our 3rd great-uncle, enlisted in the Indiana 42nd Indiana Infantry Regiment on 8 March 1864, was promoted to corporal, and mustered out 17 May 1865. Did the men talk about the war at family gatherings, or did they keep their ordeals and the horrors they witnessed to themselves? We can only guess.

Reunion of 24th Indiana Infantry Regiment (or so it appeared on the Internet). No date, but woman's dress is from late 1880s

I've told you that we descend from the Southside Virginia Raineys, although I'm missing the link between our 3rd great-grandfather James Rainey and his ascent. However, I know through DNA matches which Raineys are our distant cousins. We'll begin with the toll the Civil War took on some of our Virginia kin. We have DNA matches to the descendants of a brother and a sister of Madison L. Raney, born 1839 in Mecklenburg County. They were 6th degree cousins.  Madison enlisted on 22 June 1861 in Company B, Virginia 56th Infantry Regiment. The first land battle in Virginia had been fought 12 days earlier at Big Bethel. Loyalty lay foremost with the state and Virginia was sacred ground to its residents. No northern army would invade unscathed. He probably fought the following month at the Battle of Bull Run.

[The 56th]  moved to Tennessee and was attached to Floyd's Brigade, and was captured in the fight at Fort Donelson [Feb 1862 on the Cumberland River in Tennessee]. After being exchanged, the unit returned to Virginia and was assigned to Pickett's, Garnett's, and Hunton's Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia . . . In June 1862, it contained 466 effectives and reported 100 casualties during the Seven Days' Battles. This regiment carried only 40 men into action at Sharpsburg and eight were wounded. Of the 289 engaged at Gettysburg, more than 65 percent were disabled. . . . [O]nly three officers and 26 men surrendered on April 9, 1865. Madison was not one of them. He had been killed on one of the first three days of July 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Pickett's Charge at Battle of Gettysburg

Madison's first cousins were the sons of Williamson Rainey, Jr. (1789-1857), who had fought in the War of 1812. In the 1840 census Williamson possessed 19 enslaved people. There was such fever in the air to fight for Virginia. Hadn't the Raineys lived on its soil for nearly two hundred years and prospered?  Born 1837 in Mecklenburg County, Joseph H. Rainey, as had his cousin Madison, enlisted in Company B, Virginia 56th Infantry Regiment on June 26, 1861. He was mustered out on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg, killed in battle with Madison. His widow Narcissa remarried in January, 1866.

Burying the fallen at Gettysburg

State of Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg

Joseph's brother, John J. Rainey, born 1830 in Mecklenburg County, enlisted in Company C, Virginia 15th Cavalry Regiment on June 28, 1861, but was later transferred to Company "F" of the 14th Regiment of Infantry, "The Chambliss Grays."  He'd wed Mary Walker in 1854 and had a fine family. John was killed in August 1864 in a skirmish at Chester Station, Virginia. In 1888 Mary applied for a Confederate widow's pension. In 1937 their descendant Annie Sims applied for a headstone for his grave. The brothers are our distant cousins; we have a DNA match with John's direct descendant.

John J. Rainey, killed August 1864 at Chester Station, Virginia

Their older brother Herbert Bart Rainey, born 1829, had a wife, Martha, three sons and two daughters. He enlisted in Company D, Virginia 2nd Light Artillery Regiment and died April 18, 1862 at Richmond General Hospital, either from wounds or disease. The youngest brother in this family, Charles W. Rainey, born 1838, enlisted as a private in the 11th Regiment, Virginia Infantry, but time and casualties raised him through the enlisted ranks and by the time he mustered out at war's end, he had obtained the rank of 2nd lieutenant. He was about thirty years old when he died some three years after the war.

Some Raineys left Virginia for Georgia after the Revolutionary War. We match DNA with a descendant of Enoch John Rainey, born 1829 in Bibb County, Georgia. In the 1860 census he was listed as an overseer, probably at the adjacent plantation, whose owner listed his personal property (i.e., slaves) as worth $40,000.00. Enoch joined the 4th Battalion, Georgia Sharpshooters, raised in 1863, its members taken from other units. 
 

Battle of Resaca, Georgia

In the middle of May, 1864, General Sherman's armies were blocked at Resaca, Georgia by General Johnston's Army of the Tennessee. After two days of maneuvering and intense fighting, Johnston withdrew. Sherman would continue to advance on Atlanta, but take precautions against ordering further massed assaults where high casualties would occur. Enoch Rainey died May 24, 1864, a week after that battle and is buried in the Covington Confederate Cemetery in Georgia. His widow Lucy Ann remarried and lived until 1924.

Enoch Rainey headstone in Georgia

Enoch's brother Reuben Rainey, born 1827,  joined the 10th Georgia Infantry and survived the war to die in 1898.

Another distant cousin, Mark Rainey, son of Benjamin, was born in Georgia in 1828. Married to Sarah Flanders, he was a farmer with two children in the 1860 census. As the Confederacy's position became desperate, it raised the age of conscription to 45. Older than most soldiers, Mark either enlisted or was conscripted into the 64th Regiment, Georgia Infantry, on December 22, 1863. In early May of 1864, the 64th marched north into Virginia. Mark was one of 400 men of the regiment who fought at the Battle of the Crater on July 30th, a horrendous bloodbath. It was there or perhaps two weeks later at Deep Bottom that he was captured. He and other prisoners were carried north to a prisoner of war camp at Elmira, New York, where he died on September 14, 1864, at age 35, the 292nd death there since July. By May 16, 1865, 2963 Confederate prisoners would die from wounds or disease at that prison. He's buried at Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira. We match a descendant of his sister, Elizabeth Rainey Cravey.

Confederate Prisoner-of-war Camp, Elmira, New York

 Virginia Rainey descendants spread across the South. Woodson V. Rainey, born 1832 in Mississippi, a blacksmith like his father, John Y. Rainey, enlisted 23 March 1862 in Company G of the 21st Regiment of Mississippi Infantry. The regiment was sent to Virginia, where he fought in the Seven Days' Battle in May 1862, the Battle of Sharpsburg, which the North called Antietam, in September. In the beginning of July, 1863, 424 men of the regiment took part in the evening assault through the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg, breaking the Union line, driving them back to the the foot of Cemetery Ridge before being pushed back. The regiment lost 18 men killed and 85 wounded on that day, but Woodson survived. Over the three days of fighting, the regiment had present 1598 men, killed 105, wounded 550, missing 92, totaling 747 casualties. The regiment retreated south by rail, and then into Tennessee, where Woodson fought at Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain, Knoxville, the assault on Fort Sanders. After winter quarters, the regiment returned to Virginia, where Woodson fought in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864.

Skulls in aftermath of Battle of the Wilderness, where fire trapped combatants

He fought in battle after battle until, finally, only four officers and 44 enlisted men surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in April, 1865. Perhaps Woodson had been a blacksmith behind the lines, that he was able to survive the war, but it's more likely every able-bodied man was given a gun, or had brought one with him. He returned to Mississippi and to blacksmithing, farming 80 acres. He died in Mississippi in 1912 and was granted a headstone by the federal government in 1932 to be placed at the Itta Bena Cemetery on his unmarked grave. Perhaps it never arrived, for now no record of his grave can be found. Woodson's brother John Augustus Rainey (1833-1904) survived his service in the 24th Mississippi Infantry. No gravestone marks his grave, either. Their brother Francis Marion. Rainey, born 1836, like his brother Woodson,  joined Company G of the 21st Regiment of Mississippi Infantry. There is no evidence, such as an 1870 census or a marriage record, that he survived the war.

Elisha Franklin Rainey

In Tennessee, Elisha Franklin "Frank" Rainey, born 1834, enlisted September 30, 1862 at Chapel Hill, Marshall County, for three years with the 11th Regiment of Tennessee Cavalry and was brevetted a 2nd Lieutenant. It appears from the 1860 census that his father, Stephen William Rainey (1806-1884), valued his personal property (slaves) at nearly $15,000. The son of a large plantation owner, Elisha must have obtained a fine cavalry mount.

Originally called Holman's Battalion, the 11th took part in the fighting prior to, and in the Battle of Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862. After the battle, the battalion, under Wheeler’s command, was engaged in scouting and skirmishing along the Cumberland River below Nashville, culminating April 8, 1863, in an attack on Dover, Tennessee by the combined forces of General Wheeler and General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Elisha and his regiment rode into Georgia in late spring 1863, but a short time later were ordered back to middle Tennessee, where they fought with Forrest in the retreat of General Bragg’s Army to Chattanooga in July, and fought in the Battle of Chickamauga. He remained with his unit in east Tennessee until April 1864, when it rejoined the Army of Tennessee near Dalton, Georgia. It eventually returned to Tennessee and participated in the Battles of Franklin and Nashville (as did Everett Rainey on the Federal side), and the retreat from Tennessee. Forrest’s forces returned to Mississippi, and the 11th Regiment remained in his command until the end of the war. It appears Elisha survived the war and died about 1879 in Marshall County, Tennessee. We have a DNA match to a descendant of his aunt, Mary "Polly" Rainey Gault (c1813-1878), whose son, John R. Gault, (b.1836) was killed at Mufreesboro, Rutherford, Tennessee, in early January, 1863, fighting with the 23rd Regiment, Tennessee Infantry (Martin's).  

Marcus De Lafayette Raney (he kept this spelling of his surname) may have lied about his age when he joined up because as an old man he claimed to be born Sept. 12, 1848 in Wilson County, Tennessee. His father John Rainey (1817 Kentucky -1880 Tennessee) was a farmer and sometime tailor (and just possibly our James' brother).  When Marcus joined Colonel Richard "Dick" Morgan's Regiment in April, 1863, he claimed to be 17. He was five months shy of 15. He was about to have the adventure of a lifetime, for Colonel Morgan's brother was General John Hunt Morgan and in June of 1863, against orders, he launched a guerrilla raid from Tennessee through Kentucky and into Indiana and Ohio. Marcus claimed in his pension application to have ridden in Company D under Captain Payne in Morgan's Brigade of Kentucky Cavalry. Read about the raid HERE 

Depiction of Morgan's Raid

After being with Morgan in the 1863 and '64 raids, he rode with Captain Jerry Stone's Company A in Lyon's Tennessee Cavalry until war's end. Years later, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he died in 1928. We have DNA matches to his direct descendants.

Marcus DeLafayette Raney and his prosperous-looking family

As already mentioned, the Raineys spread throughout the south and into Texas. But they went north and west, too. Wilson Rainey (1839 Gibson County, IN-1894 Warrick Co. IN), grandson of William Rainey (1770 NC-1840 Gibson Co., IN), served with the 65th Indiana Infantry Regiment from August 1862 until mustered out at Greensboro, North Carolina in June of 1865. Jonathan Rainey (1836 Xenia OH-1902 Jay Co. IN), grandson of Buckner Rainey of Mecklenburg Co., Virginia, served with the 25th Regiment, Ohio Infantry. For the most part, the Raineys remained south of the Ohio River. And so it isn't strange that just a cursory perusal of our family tree finds over 30 Raineys who fought for the Confederacy. I'll top off this blog with this tough kid, William Henry Rainey.

William Henry Rainey

William Henry Rainey was born in August 1843 in Coffeyville, Clark County, Alabama. By 1860 he and his family were living in Union Parish, Louisiana, below the Arkansas state line. His father, William James Rainey, born in Brunswick County, Virginia in 1813, had wandered far from his ancestral home. William Sr. was a poor dirt farmer without slaves. William the younger enlisted August 13, 1861, at Camp Moore, Louisiana in Company L, 12th Louisiana Infantry. He had just turned 18. 

In the late spring 1863 he was part of a large contingent outside Vicksburg during its siege by General Grant. 

The main body of the 12th Louisiana, led by Colonel Scott who was obeying orders from Brigadier General Abram Buford, withdrew from the battlefield on the night of May 16th and followed the rest of Major General William W. Loring's Division in a 35 mile forced march to Crystal Springs, Mississippi on the New Orleans, Jackson & Great Northern Railroad. Loring's Division quickly reported to General Joseph E. Johnston who was collecting additional troops at Jackson, hoping ultimately to relieve the siege of Vicksburg. Morale among the soldiers in Johnston's army dropped sharply after the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4th and Port Hudson on July 9th. When ordered to retreat from Jackson on the night of July 16th, a large contingent from the 12th Louisiana deserted and went home to Louisiana.

William did not desert. A lad with a strong constitution, he was hospitalized only once.

Illness and temporary hospitalization during June and July 1863 took an additional heavy toll. Of the 659 men who marched away from Baker's Creek to Crystal Springs, only 504 were present for duty when the regiment reached Morton Station, Mississippi in late July at the end of the retreat from Jackson. [This regiment began with 1200 men]


Nine months later, the regiment took 499 men into action at Resaca in northwest Georgia on May 10, 1864. A truly heroic effort requiring determination, courage, and personal sacrifice was made by the men of the 12th Louisiana Infantry during the last full year of the war. Combat casualties became a significant factor in reducing regimental manpower. Between May 10th and September 5th while serving with the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood, the 12th Louisiana was in nearly daily contact with elements of the Federal army under Major General William T. Sherman. Battle casualties totaled 106 men: 32 killed or mortally wounded, 65 seriously wounded who required hospitalization, and 9 men captured. Many others were slightly wounded but able to remain on duty with their companies. Disease and exhaustion from combat fatigue forced the long term hospitalization of another 63 men. By September 1864, the number of men present for duty dropped below 360.

William fought at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain at the end of June, 1864, and at the battles of Franklin and Nashville in December 1864 during General Hood's disastrous invasion of Tennessee. Our Everett Rainey shadowed him the entire time on the opposing side.
 

Site of Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia

Transferred to North Carolina, the regiment participated in the last infantry charge of the war made by the Confederate army gathered under General Joseph E. Johnston at Bentonville on March 19th. Documented casualties were 4 killed, 11 wounded, and 1 captured. The regiment was surrendered and paroled at Greensboro, North Carolina under the terms and conditions of an agreement reached between Generals Johnston and Sherman on April 26, 1865 at Durham Station. 

William returned home to Louisiana and took up farming. He married Anna Gates in 1868 and they produced a large family. He died in 1908. We have a DNA match to their descendant. Here's a photograph of William and Anna in later years.

 We'll finish with another Weavers' song, "Wasn't That a Time." HERE