When it rains, it pours I suppose, this time in a good manner, as after a long drought with little luck combining genealogy with the Civil War, I have discovered another connection only one week after finding one great-great grandfather in the war.
While still working on research for John Conrad Hofstetter, I found that maternal grandmother's other grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Davis, was a private in Company D of the 7th West Virginia Cavalry. (He even had a patriotic name!)
He was a native of Virginia, a Confederate state, but lived in the far western portion of it, in Mason and Putnam counties. By the time he enlisted in February 1864, that part of the state had become the new state of West Virginia, as the people in the western area of the Old Dominion had their own culture and did not support slavery or secession as those in the eastern region did. This means that both of my grandmother's grandfathers were Union cavalrymen.
The 7th West Virginia Cavalry stayed mainly in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia during Davis' (he apparently went by "Franklin" per a cursory glimpse of his records on fold3.com) time in the unit.
I actually have a couple photographs of him, obviously prior to the invention of safety razors, though probably far after the war. Also, I just found a family history site that has more genealogical information, under the Hofstetter section, http://www.hofstetter.yolasite.com. I will be using that site quite frequently.
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