All tongue-in-cheek. I make a pretty poor Confederate, and as a "Western" North Carolinian, I probably have (would have had?) more Unionist sympathies that one might suspect. North Carolina (and Tennessee) were the last to leave the Union... Abercrombie's by nature dislike change and are historically apt to support the "status quo." Many were Torys in the Revolution (Gen. Sir Ralph Abercrombie, to wit) and dissenters in the War Between the States (the Confeds used to send conscription parties into western NC and eastern Tenn. on raids to round up folks like my family to force them to fight for the Lost Cause). Live and let live, and leave us alone... Few owned slaves. That being said, there was one Thomas Abercrombie in Louisiana with 500 or more slaves, reputed to be one of those types that prompted Harriet Beecher Stowe to write what she did. Thanks for the replies! Several more moved into the "known" column. - John C. Calhoun