Visiting Confederate Soldier's Grave

Today I am going with cousins to Union Springs to visit our great-grandfather's grave. Colonel John Luther Branch was a professor at the Citadel in SC when he joined the Confederate Army.

I have written about him before. He gave the order to fire on the Star of the West in December, 1860, thus essentially making that the first shot of the War, even though Beauregard didn't actually start the war until April of 1861.

I am going to put a small Confederate Battle flag and a First Confederate flag on his grave. Fortunately he survived the war, married my great-grandmother, Martha Ann Gachet Deloney, and their son, Edward Gachet Branch, was my grandfather (my mother's father).

I am proud, as I am sure you are, of all my ancestors. But it was grandfather Ed who said "don't brag on your ancestors unless they can brag on you"!