“I’m a little Yankee!” I said repeating after my Illinois born father. “No, no!” said my Arkansas born mother whose ancestors lived close enough to hear the cannons being fired during the Battle of Jenkin’s Ferry in Arkansas. “Say I’m a little rebel!”

I didn’t really understand the American Civil War and what different worlds the north and south were, at least not “experientially,” until the summer of 2011. I received an invitation to the 200th Ewbank-Smith Family Reunion. Even though there had been previous reunions, this one celebrating the 1811 arrival of the Ewbank family in Indiana, seemed monumental.

John and Ann Chapman Ewbank homestead, Guilford, Indiana