Many people would say that my GGGrandfather, James Berry Walker (JBW), is/was the Black Sheep of the family.  He has been labeled a scoundrel, a coward, a deserter and a bigamist.  Based on years of research by myself (I stem from the Ohio/TX side of the family) and a fellow Walker cousin (from the Georgia side of the family), I believe that the first two labels couldn’t be further from the truth but the latter two are technically correct!

Rather than launch into a lengthy narrative (which will be forthcoming), let me simply say that I believe JBW found himself having become a pawn in a terrible war that was separate from the North-South Civil War, and as a result, he was forced into having to make an unimaginably dreadful decision.  It was a life/death decision that would alienate him forever from his Georgia family and result in a new family in Texas.  It was a decision that only a man with strong stamina and conviction could possible make regardless of the fact that he must have known the burden he would carry for the remainder of his life!

(Note – The lengthy narrative mentioned above will be posted in 2015 or 2016 and the Walker Family Tree, which has been kept private thus far, will also be made public several places online.  In the meantime I would strongly encourage those hungry to know more about JBW’s Civil War dilemma to read A Separate Civil War: Communities in Conflict in the Mountain South written by Dr. Jonathan Dean Sarris in 2006 … the book is available in a Kindle edition by Amazon.com.)