The Civil War battle, reenacted with crumpled paper that served as bullets we threw across the room, helped me fall in love with history. As an eighth grader, I was proud to fight against the other half of the class for the Confederate States because I knew that my ancestors probably did the same. But despite my vivid imagination, I always pictured these ancestors as very different from me. What could I possibly have in common with slave owners from so far away who lived in such a different time?

My grandfather, an avid genealogist, recently introduced me to Durham Hall Smith, my great-great-great-grandfather from North Carolina. His story gave me some insight into who I am.

Durham Hall Smith was the fortunate owner of a gristmill and thus exempt from enlistment in the Civil War. But because of his brother's great fear of going to war, at age thirty-one, Durham joined the Confederate side in his brother's place and fought under General Robert E. Lee.

Durham later spoke of living on three biscuits a day and wearing shoes full of holes in the freezing cold. But these were the least of his troubles. After a few months of fighting, he was taken prisoner by the Union army. In two weeks he was released on parole, but his run of bad luck continued.

A bullet put a hole in Durham's stomach and took part of his liver with it. He lay injured in the bottom of a creek bed, unable to move, for three days. When a Yankee soldier passed by, Durham impulsively gave him the Mason sign. The Yankee was also a Mason and he returned the sign. He gave Durham a drink from his canteen then dragged him out of the creek bed and propped him up against a tree.

Meanwhile, Durham's troops came by each day to rescue the soldiers they thought could survive. The third day they passed by, Durham begged them to take him because his wife and two children needed him. They told him they didn't have anything to kill the pain let alone save his life. He replied that he knew he would survive if they would just give him a chance.

A searing iron poker without anesthesia put Durham on the road to recovery, and after a sixty-day respite Durham was expected to report back to the battlefields. It didn't take him long to get wounded again, this time with a bullet to the chest. The small Bible he carried in his breast pocket saved his life that day, and Durham knew he was meant to survive the war.

Shortly afterward, the war came to an end and Durham returned home. He lived with the pain and scars of his war wounds throughout his life, but they didn't stop him from being an integral member of the community. Durham even named his first son born after the war Union, in honor of his unknown benefactor. And although a clamshell covered the hole in his stomach, he still raised a large family, hauled freight across North Carolina, made shoes, and ran a turpentine still.

Eleven children and many descendents later, I am one of the many who are honored to keep Durham Hall Smith's legacy alive. It's thrilling to learn of the courage and strength that got my great-great-great-grandfather through the horrors of the Civil War.

Durham fought for his brother and survived for his family. I hope my desire to serve those around me brings half the inspiring results for my posterity. Although I don't carry a Bible around in my pocket, maybe the genes fit after all.

Melissa Spencer is a senior at Boston University majoring in public relations. She considers herself a genealogy dilettante.

Return to September/October 2004 issue of Ancestry Magazine.