A Civil War soldier in the family

John Madison Jackson, the great-great-grandfather of Pam, Chris, Cathy, David, Dee Ann and Terri Lynn and the great-great-great-grandfather of Noah Miller Johnson and Zachary, Moriah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Avamarie Miller, was a Confederate infantryman who died in the Civil War. Here's how he is connected to us:

He was the father of John Hamilton Jackson, who was the mother of Mamie Louella Jackson, who was the mother of William Alton and Arline Miller, aka Brother and Cissie.

Here's his story: John Madison Jackson was born in the Beaver Island area of Stokes County, N.C., in 1823, the son of John Jackson and Nancy Dearing. On Dec. 10, 1850, he married Julie Ann Richardson (1832-1895, daughter of John W. Richardson and Ruth Gann Richardson). They had five children, the fourth of whom was our great-great-grandpa, John Hamilton Jackson (March 18, 1859-Dec. 24, 1924). The others were David Fountain (Jan. 29, 1982-May 22, 1921), who married Frances Richardson (a relative); William Jordan (called Jerd; never married; 1854-); Ruth Isabell (called Belle, 1856-), and James Madison (Aug. 29, 1862-).

On Feb. 12, 1863, at age 40, John Madison Jackson, then a farmer in Stokes County, enlisted in Company G, 22nd Regiment of the North Carolina infantry of the Confederate army. On May 28 or 31, 1864, he was captured by the Union army in or near Mechanicsville, Va., and imprisoned at Point Lookout, Md., a huge, overcrowded, fetid Union prison camp (now a state park; you can Google it for gruesome details) where he died of disease or starvation or abuse on June 27, 1864. His name is on a marker of a mass grave at the Confederate Cemetery in Point Lookout, Md.

It's quite possible he was captured and doomed in one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, Cold Harbor, which happened at that time near Mechanicsville. I Googled that battle and found many, many grisly Matthew Brady photos from it.

He was just one of our ancestors to die in the Civil War. All were Confederate soldiers, a choice based almost entirely on the culture and era they were born into, which are the most powerful shapers of ideology, when you come right down to it. Three of John Madison Jackson's brothers-in-law also died in the war: William Richardson, husband of his sister Roslyn Jackson Richardson; John Dodson, husband of his sister Prudence Jackson Dodson, and Alexander Powers, husband of his sister Lindsey (Lincey) Jackson Powers.