great great great grandpa Bole

A long time ago I heard a statistic that stuck with me; that most people cannot name their great grandparents. At the time I heard it I know I couldn't. So it pleases me that I can finally name all eight of them and many more still. Not only that, but I have seen pictures of all but one of them, my Granny's mother who died when Granny was just a little girl. And whats more, I know a little bit about some of them by piecing together little snippets that I have collected through my research and now have a sketchy pixelated composite idea of what some aspects of their lives might have been like. I like knowing my families place in history, it helps me understand my own place a little better I guess.

This summer on my trip back to South Carolina I made a point to go to Camp Ford in Tyler Texas. It was a rebel prison camp from the civil war and it was where my great great great grandfather Sampson Bole died of disease just months before the war ended. As prison camps went, it was one of the better ones, and had it not been for overcrowding toward the end Sampson might have lived. He was from Ohio and from his muster records I know he was 44 when he enlisted, that he was tall and dark complected, and was a carpenter by trade. He enlisted in April of 1864, was captured at the battle of Marks Mills in Arkansas and was marched to Camp Ford and was dead by October. He is buried in a National Cemetery in Pineville Louisiana. I made a point to go there too. He was not listed on the record there meant to help make finding grave sites easier. But Steve found it back in the corner,one of the older graves in the cemetery. Yes, Sampson's grave was there in spite of being left off the "helpful" list. We left some flowers, a note in the record book suggesting they update it and include Sampson in it, and then headed back to South Carolina. I don't know if any other of his descendants have been to his grave, but I have. I wondered what he must have thought as he lay dying alone and far from home. I wondered if he worried that he would be lost and forgotten, if his family would ever know what became of him. I know they did eventually learn of his death , his wife Lydia petitioned for her widows pension, and William Hook, the man who as a friend of the family vouched for her having been married to Sampson was to become her own daughter Sarah's father in law and one of my own great great great grandfathers when Sarah married his son William Bernard Hook, I even have a picture of him and William Bernard too, Sarah eventually divorced him...I wonder if I will ever know why? I do know that Sampson was not forgotten and I think it pleases him to know that even now 140 years and 5 generations later he is still thought of, loved and remembered.