You're given one set of "facts", and another set of different facts shows up. I spent 5 years searching for one of my MATERNAL Grandfathers. He did not have a very common name, "Alphonzo Burton Hutto". Now just how hard could that be? How many people with that name were there in the Confederate Army?

WELL!!!! I found one, And he was in the same company and regiment as my PATERNAL Grandfather. I thought, well this is great, that's how Grandma and Grandpa met after the war, was throught this comrade-in-arms fellowship.

WRONG !!!!

In reading a history of another South Carolina unit, where another of my Maternal Grandfathers fought in, I accidentally ran across a muster roll list for a "Burt" Hutto. I thought, that's interesting I wonder who he is? He has to be related with a name like that? Maybe he is a cousin? So I ordered his CSR muster roll and lo and behold it contained a POW record, with a physical description, and the notation that his name was "A. Burt Hutto".

Well, you know where this is going. I had two men by the SAME name "Alphonso Burton Hutto". How odd is that? Which one was my Grandfather?

While I was inclined to still go with the first one because of the Comrades-in-arms connections, the second "Burt Hutto" a had a simular, but not as close connection. Since I had a physical description of both men because they both had been captured, there was one physical difference between the two, The first Alphonso Hutto was listed as 5'8", and the second was listed as 6'3".

Well, my mother was 9 years old when her Grandfather died and I asked her if she could remember anything about him physically. She said that all she could remember was that he was a tall man with a crippled left shoulder and arm. Well there it was. Alphonso Burton Hutto #2's service record confirmed this, and it was he, who was my Grandfather, and not the man I had originally thought was him because he had fought beside my Paternal Grandfather. It turned out that these two men, with the same odd name, were 1st cousins.

So the moral of this story is that whenever we thing we have got all the bases covered, and all the facts researched, Research of Civil War records can always throw you a curve ball.