I do basically the same Veterans and Memorial Day post every year where I gloss over over my family's military history and when I get to my 2nd and 3rd great grandfather's I always hint that there was so much more to their lives that would blow your minds so here goes...

My 4th great grandfather lived in Loudon County, Virginia, and ( @THEChrisKessell should love this next part) migrated into modern West Virginia which was still part of the colony of Virginia at the time along with his brothers.

They were some of the very first "Over the Mountain Men" who the modern Univ of WV take their mascot (The Mountaineers) from today. Most OTMs centered around modern Kingsport and Sycamore Shoals in Tennessee but they were legit on the frontier mountain country of modern WV.

When the American Revolution broke out my 4GGF was made an officer in the local militia. He fought in the battles numerous battles both as an OTM officer and later as an actual Continental Army proper officer.

While with the Continental Army he made friends with a man who was George Washington's secretary and later sent to Philadelphia to be the Secretary of the 2nd Continental Congress.

After the war this man's family joined with my family and couple others and began settling modern Kentucky. The names of these families were Fleetwood, Ripey, Todd, Lincoln, Davis, and Ripey. And, yes, it was THOSE Todds and Lincolns.

In 1812 he was called to war again against the British and he answered; leaving behind his pregnant wife who was pregnant w/ my 3GGF who was born the same year in Kentucky.

When the men returned from the War of 1812 there was a severe rift between the settlers that wasn't along family lines but between those who were slave holders and those who had become abolitionists. The abolitionists picked up and moved north into Indiana and the slavers stayed.

My 4GGF was among those abolitionists along with Thomas Lincoln (Honest Abe's father).

He became a legit frontiersman & fur trader. He built an illegal camp in modern Missouri at the northern foot of the Ozark mountains.

Family legend is he made it to the Rocky Mountains before Lewis & Clark pushing farther west for good hunting grounds. When the Louisiana Purchase was opened he was one of the very first men to claim land as a Vet and did so where his hunting camp was located.

This is all red blooded American history stuff but I thought necessary back story...

GET READY FOR THE CRAZY CRAY CRAY STUFF STARTING NOW!!!

When our families went to Missouri my 3GGF and a friend brought two black men and their families who were FREEMEN and amazing hunters and horse trainers respectively. Our families had purchased their freedom and they remained close.

Some of the surrounding families did not appreciate our families bringing, settling, and living, among free black families at all (to put it mildly).

Sometime in the early 1830s they held horse races my 3GGF participated in on horses one of the freed black men trained. In a particularly large purse race he defeated a family from northern Arkansas' horse who they thought was unbeatable because he had never lost.

They tried to steal the prize from my 3GGF and a shootout ensued. My 3GGF was shot through the hand. The shootout was covered by newspapers as far as Chicago and North Carolina.

Ove the next 30 years a string of murders, settlement raids, and trail ride robberies (early bushwhackings) ensued. Dozens and dozens lost their lives in these incidents. It all culminated, to this point at least, in early 1861 (before Fort Sumter)...

You see, my 3GGM's cousin's husband had been elected President of The United States and people were PISSED. It was fuel on the fire. They decided they were going to end our families then and there.

So they gathered on the Arkansas side of the border in the mountains, about 150 men, but two Missouri men named Cunningham came upon them and discovered their plans. They returned to Missouri post haste to warn their neighbors.

My 3GGM was pregnant with her 12th child, my 2GGF.

My 3GGF owned two pieces of artillery and our cousins owned a third. Knowing their aggressors would have to attack from the south, across a creek, and through an apple orchard, they set the cannons on high ground and waited outnumbered close to 6 to 1.

When the Arkansas men attacked across the creek my family let loose the cannons. It shocked the Arkansas men who retreated back across the creek into the woods.

They fought for 14 hours in small skirmishes in a guerilla like affair until a local law posse arrived and helped drive off the Arkansans. No arrests were made but the Governor of Missouri was notified of the incident.

Warrants for the arrests of people on both sides were issued but before they could be executed Fort Sumter in South Carolina was attacked and the Civil War had began.

The warrants were abandoned and men from both sides joined the war effort. Obviously my ancestors fought for the Union; they were abolitionists and relatives of the POTUS by marriage.

My 3GGF formed a militia and was the man who held off the vanguard of the CSA until the main force of the Union Army arrived at Clark's Mill. One of the most defining battles of the western front of the war.

In 1864 the men from Arkansas snuck across the border again and raided the family homestead. They snuck up on my oldest 2nd great uncle who was deaf and shot him in the back of the head through a window into his room while playing with my 2 y/o 2GGF and the shootout commenced.

My 3GGF was killed the same day though nobody knows the exact details of how amidst the shootout, they just know it happened.

In the aftermath of the Civil War the rival families began to pressure my widowed 3GGM for the extensive landholding she had inherited upon her husband's murder. And the Feud continued and actually. Go look into the history of the Ozarks post Civil War for a better understanding.

Cousins of my 3GGF ( @THEChrisKessell is gonna love this part too) offered a solution by a hand in marriage of a widowed sharpshooter from the war who had a young son of his own and he would come protect them. His name was Hatfield, and yes, it was THOSE Hatfields.

Damn it, I forgot something important going forward. The black families left during the Civil War and settled in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma). This will be important soon, sorry.

Hatfield arrived and was immediately accepted into the fold and our rivals incensed because they were sure they'd be able to push a widow off her land but a battle hardened sharp shooter was a new problem.

In 1865 they tried to raid the homestead again but found a settlement more like a fort than a horse ranch and apple orchard. They got their asses kicked, again.

Hatfield wrote a letter to the Governor that is preserved to this day pleading for help.

Little help was offered, the James Gang was famous and held sway. Baldknobbers from the counties just to the west offered help though and the feud grew even more fierce.

The James Gang, or at least one of the brothers and part of the crew, tried to rob a local bank near the same time. Our cousin was the Sheriff. They chased one of the James brothers under a train stand but his compatriots offered covering fire for him to escape.

The James Gang never screwed with the surrounding area again fearing our cousin the sheriff and his new Cousin-in-Law's sharpshooting skills.

Over the course of the next few years they tried to raid the homestead and bushwhack my 3GGM's new husband numerous times. Even tried to frame him for cattle theft after he was hired to transport cattle to Kansas City.

Then the worst thing that could have happened did, our cousin was defeated in his reelection bid for sheriff by a member of rival Klan's (see what I did there) family.

They wasted not a moment to act. They gathered, once again, and this time had a much better plan. Rather than charge in they would set up a siege since they had the ability to attack from more than just the southern creek.

A group of men attempted to sneak through the apple orchard but in a stroke of dumb luck one of the teenage brothers in our family saw a man with a rifle at the ready, shot him in the back dead, and bolted to the house.

Upon hearing the gunshots my family my ancestors knew what to do and what was coming, they had done this too many times before the last 35 years...

My 7 y/o 2GGF grabbed a pistol, flipped his bed, and hid near a window. Two men came across the porch in front of his window and he shot them both, one in the side of the head, and the other twice in the chest and abdomen.

My 2GGF sat there all night waiting while listening to the man he had shot twice holler while he bled out and died just feet away from him on the other side of a wall and shot out window. He was SEVEN YEARS OLD.

They surrounded the house for two days when an uncle who had come to visit discovered what had happened and sent his wife and kids back north to their homestead and to gather family and he rode west to Branson to get a US Marshal and Baldknobbers for help.

A Civil War veteran, his wife, and 18 children who were blended as sons and daughters of the marriage and orphaned children of family and friends from the Civil War held off a force of more than 70 well armed men for four days before the Marshal and Baldknobbers arrived.

On the fourth night a small group of the youngest children who were old enough to ride snuck off to family with horses waiting and they rode hard for Indian Territory.

Remember the black families who left during the Civil War...

On day five the Marshal negotiated a cease fire under the condition he would personally take Hatfield and the two young children accused of murder now into custody himself and deliver them to Springfield or Branson. Most of the besiegers "dispersed."

But the two young kids were nowhere to be found, they had been among those who snuck out the previous night and only Hatfield was taken into custody. On the road to Branson they were ambushed; Hatfield was shot 28 times to death.

With their rival Klan (did it again, whoops) as sheriff and no adult male to rely upon my 3GGM took most of the family north to Iowa; except my 2GGF and one older brother who were still wanted for murder.

For the next seven years my 2GGF, his older brother, and his same aged step-brother, were raised by black and Native American families in Indian Territory and hiding from murder charges in Missouri.

Eventually the murder charges were resolved and dropped, after 7 years, and the brothers went to Iowa to join their family.

But they had made friends and connections in Indian Territory and convinced the family to move once again, this time to where their grandmother had already migrated to, after being widowed, with her oldest daughter in southern Kansas close to Indian Territory.

My 2GGF & his step-bro began to "Ride Shotgun" for stagecoaches and trade caravans coming and going from Indian Territory on the plains. They became famously effective. It's said that Wyatt Earp never asked for their rifles when they rode through Dodge (probably a fam myth).

Eventually they became outright lawmen in southern Kansas in the county just west of where they had originally settled.

My 2GGF had married the daughter of an illegitimate son from a wealthy and very famous family from Chicago. The kind of family whose namesake has a skyscraper and bankrupt department store today.

After my 2GGM's father had died her mother and brother had inherited numerous properties in and around Coffeyville and Arkansas City. Mostly old shotgun houses.

In 1892 some seedy men rented two of those homes from my other 3GGM (2GGF's M-I-L) and her son was sure he recognized two of them. So he rode hard for the county seat where my 2GGF and step-brother were Deputies.

HOLY CRAPPOLA, this has taken way longer than I expected... I have a conference call and an appointment w/ a client I need to handle but I'm not even done with this thread nobody is really reading yet.

I'll be back to bore my seven followers and finish in a few hours.