Dear Group, Barbara Petty sent me a MOST interesting message regarding one of her relatives from Somerset, Niagara Co., who was captured during the Battle of Cold Harbor and one of her husband's North Carolina ancestors who had fought in the Battle of Petersburg. And in checking the history of the regiments from Niagara County who had fought in BOTH battles, there was the chance that . . . Pardon me, but on the radio right this very minute they just started to play the theme song from Gone With the Wind!! It gave me a bit of a shiver! :-) Ahem (clearing her throat!), the point I wanted to make was that when we research our family histories, we may just find that in some point in time, it isn't just a matter of finding brothers fighting on opposite sides, as happened in some cases during the Civil War, but that in the Civil War and other wars, families eventually find that "enemy" descendants married into their eventual families. Or, in my case when my sister and I were finally reunited with our German third cousins, we found that one of our third cousins had been a soldier in the German Army who was killed during WWII. Whether it was an American bullet that killed him or an American bomb that killed him or just how he died. Nonetheless, it was an awkward moment when our third cousin Elfriede Geiger told us that her brother Otto had been killed during the war in 1943. There was an unspoken acknowledgment that we were Americans, they were Germans and that when we were just kids, our individual countries were at war with each other and in both of our families, family members had lost their lives during the war. Nothing more was said about it. However, Elfriede gave me a photograph of Otto taken when he was a little boy. I was touched by the gesture and I treasure the picture. Barbara, I'm certain that the list would REALLY enjoy reading the message you sent me. And if you would post it, I'll go ahead and post to the list the first chapter of the book I wrote about the history of the Town of Porter (It Happened Just Down the Road). The chapter is entitled, "Grandpa McCollum and His Brother Melville." There is a definite parallel between the two. Note: the Battle of Cold Harbor lasted between 5 to 20 minutes (depending on what source you have at hand) but I don't doubt the source I have at hand that says that at least 120 Niagara County soldiers lost their lives during those awful few minutes. And trust me, some of them were from Town of Porter. vee