Military Monday: Christopher Columbus Logan and James O. Barbary--One Blue and One Gray

For Cherie's great-grandmother Cordelia Logan Davenport, Memorial Day or Decoration Day, as she probably referred to it, would have made for interesting family conversation. While both of her grandfathers fought in the Civil War, one wore blue and the other wore gray—yep one was Union, the other was Confederate. The Blue Yankee was Christopher Columbus Logan and the Gray Rebel was James O. Barbary.

Christopher Columbus Logan

Christopher Columbus Logan, known as Lum Logan, was born in 1842 in Whitley County, Kentucky. He died there in 1920. Married three times, he fathered 18 children! His oldest child was born when he was 22 and his youngest born when he was 74. 

Lum served in Company F, 32nd Kentucky Infantry. He enlisted on 2 November 1862 and was discharged as a private on 12 August 1863. The 32nd was a guard and scouting unit and saw action one time in the defense of an attempted invasion of Kentucky at the Battle of Perryville—but that took place in September 1862, before Lum signed up. The Regiment lost 43 soldiers during its service, all to disease.

James O. Barbary was born in Virginia in about 1836. James apparently moved from Virginia to Knox County, Tennessee before 1860. A Virginian by birth James most likely had Confederate sentiments; however, eastern Tennessee, where he moved prior to the Civil War was an area of decidedly Union sentiments given that the plantation system and slavery were almost non-existent. In fact eastern Tennessee attempted to succeed from western Tennessee and remain part of the Union, but that attempt failed. James served in the Virginia Levi's-Barr's Light Artillery Battery, enlisting as a private on 15 May 1863 at Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. It appears that the unit James joined fought the Union advances in eastern Tennessee, but by the end of 1863, eastern Tennessee was back in Union control. James moved his family to Kentucky shortly after the war where his daughter Sarah married Lum Logan’s son John. James appears to have died in Kentucky by 1900.