John Ledford-Union Man

I am becoming very attached to my Ledford line. I am related to the same Ledford line twice (or is it the same Patterson line twice?), although it took me years to discover this. My great-great grandparents were Thomas Hill and Alma (Ledford) Patterson. Alma's grandparents were John and Sarah (Patterson) Ledford. Sarah's brother was Thomas Hill Patterson's grandfather. In otherwords, T.H. and Alma had one set of shared great-grandparents.
This double relationship only slightly has to do with why I'm becoming so attached to my Ledford line. Encountering them twice in the main line I research puts them high on my list of top researched families. In the last few years I have begun coming across sources that really flesh out the Ledfords. Originally I had such bare bones on them that they were just names, that's part of the reason it was so long before I discovered there were two Ledford-Patterson marriages in my direct line.
One of my favorite pieces of random Ledford history is courtesy of Alma's father's Civil War Pension application. William Nelson Ledford and his brother James Washington Ledford both applied for Union pensions and received them. Somewhere along the way it appears a law was changed and they lost their Union pensions. This was one of those situations a genealogist loves. Not surprisingly, neither man was too happy to suddenly stop receiving money. They fought the rejection with affidavit after affidavit (*note: both men's service was essentially identical and they claimed the same circumstances affected both of them so only one set of documents were sent for both men, these are filed in W.N.'s file). These were two of the most engrossing Union pensions I have ever read (although not as amusing or long as one of their possible cousins, that's another post).
From all the affidavits I am only sure of one thing. Their father, John Ledford, was a Union man. Most of the affidavits supported the borthers' claim that they were forced into Confederate service against their will or choice (this support isn't surprising, why would you find witnesses that disagree with you? The exact reason they joined the Confederate forces differs, though). Even those affidavits which state the Ledford boys willingly joined the Confederate army agree that their father was a Union man. This is the one point in the pension files that is consistent.
Sadly there is no indication why John Ledford was a Union man. Some affidavit's state he was pro-Union as early as the 1850s. I have been completely unable to determine who John Ledford's parents or family were or even where in NC he came from. In my research, he springs full grown into Northeast GA as the husband of Sarah Patterson (no marriage record has been found so even the exact location in NE GA is tentative, probably Habersham, the Pattersons were in Rabun). Without knowing about his roots, John Ledford's extremely strong (and well known) Union sympathies are unexplained.
I'm not so intrigued by John's pro-Union sentiments so much as how well known they seemed to be. The way this fact was threaded through the pension files made it stand out for me in a certain way. Pro-Union sympathies weren't uncommon in that part of GA and they aren't uncommon in my family. I have read a number of other Union pension files for relatives of this Ledford line (all from the same county) and none of them had any element of strong pro-Unionism. Perhaps it's just a fluke because W.N. and J.W. Ledford lost their pensions. Whatever the reason,...
John Ledford was a Union man.