“I Will Not Fight Against the United States”

John Newton Krimminger, my great-great-grandfather, grew up on the family farm—as did most of my ancestors. Though the census often listed him as a farmer, his path diverged in quiet but meaningful ways. He studied theology until poor health forced him home, and over time he became a magistrate, a physician, a senator, and eventually a judge.

In his early years, he was regarded as thoughtful and caring. Few negative things were written about him—until the war. When he was conscripted into the Confederate Army, everything changed. His political beliefs placed him at the center of controversy, and his life ended violently at the age of fifty-three. This is his story.

More Than a List of Names and Dates 

After 25 years of researching my ancestors, I’ve come to understand that genealogy is more than a list of names and dates—it’s the story of a life. And some lives resist easy telling. Judge John Newton Krimminger is one of those. He wore two uniforms, gray and blue, walked both sides of a divided country, and died in a place still trying to rebuild itself.

His story is complicated—not just by politics or war, but by a question I keep circling back to: Will I ever understand him? And if I do, will I respect him the way I’ve come to respect my other ancestors?

That question has followed me for years. It still does

Was This Justice—Or Just Revenge?

The morning air hung heavy with humidity, the lingering breath of the previous day’s rain. Though the storm had moved on, it left behind a rising Suwannee River, swelling higher still at Troy Springs. The whole of Troy lay submerged, its dirt roads swallowed by the flood. Only two buildings remained above water—the county courthouse and the home of my great-great-grandfather, John Newton Krimminger. Above it all, the morning sun sat about half an hour high, bright and unwavering.

As he did every morning, Judge Krimminger stepped onto the piazza, washing his face and hands in the cool morning air before settling into his favorite chair. He absently toyed with his watch chain, content with the world around him, unaware that danger loomed just forty yards away. From an upstairs courthouse window, his political enemy carefully slid the pane open—just enough to ease the barrel of an over/under rifle shotgun through.

Rebecca, Judge Krimminger’s wife, and his daughter, possibly my great-grandmother Caroline, were in the kitchen preparing the morning meal when the shot rang out, followed by Judge Krimminger’s yell. He called out three times before Rebecca reached the front door. She saw him rise, stagger, and fall facedown. Rushing to his side, she turned him over—he tried to speak but couldn’t

Before the War, Before the Judge—My Great-Great Grandfather

Great-Great-Grandfather John Newton Krimminger didn't die on the battlefields of Second Bull Run or Sharpsburg—but that morning, the war ended for him, sitting there on his front porch.

John Newton Krimminger. Was born on September 16, 1819, the eighth child of Christopher and Elizabeth Krimminger in Cabarras County, North Carolina. His childhood was shaped by a close relationship with a plow and the fertile land along handy Branch. Like most boys in rural Carolina, he learned to work the soil early. But unlike most, John carried a restless mind—a hunger for something beyond the fields.

He pursued theology, enrolling at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in South Carolina. For a time, the path seemed steady—his calling, a man of faith. But illness interrupted that dream. The records don’t name it, only that it nearly killed him. In a letter home, he wrote plainly of how close death had come.

    

He returned to Cabarrus to recover, and by 1846, he was strong again—strong enough to resume his ambitions, though they no longer included the white collar of the church or the rows of Hamby’s branch.

   

 By the 1850s, John Krimminger had built a life in Darlington County, South Carolina—a region of modest farms and established authority. He served as a magistrate, earned the trust of his neighbors, and married young Rebecca Wright, just sixteen at the time. Together they raised a family and worked the land.

“His land ranked among the most productive in the district. I like to think he carried that quiet pride with him.”

Even amidst the rhythm of rural life, he found time to attend South Carolina Medical College and earn his degree. For Dr. Krimminger, education was a lifelong pursuit—there seemed no end to what he wanted to learn.

Turns out, back then, a degree could be earned just by attending lectures. Makes you wonder.

But by 1860, the nation was unraveling. The election of Abraham Lincoln stirred secessionist fervor across the South. Florida left the Union in January 1861. Shots rang out at Fort Sumter in April. And like many Southern men, Dr. Krimminger faced a decision that was no longer theoretical.

Crossing the Line

He was forty-two—beyond the age of mandatory service when the Confederate Conscription Act passed in 1862—but he enlisted anyway. Why? Unfortunately the records don’t an answer. Maybe it was duty. Maybe pride. Maybe he didn’t see another way forward in a region where doing nothing was no longer welcome.

   

In May of that year, John Newton Krimminger joined Company G of the 18th South Carolina Infantry in Charleston. His regiment was soon swept into the chaos of the Northern Virginia Campaign—Second Manassas, South Mountain, Antietam. For most, the war was wounds and bullets. For John Krimminger, it was sickness.

Between October 1862 and March 1863, he was shuttled from one Confederate hospital to another—Richmond, Danville, Wilmington. The names on the rolls tell a quiet story of suffering: nephralgia, debilities, hemorrhoids. He returned to duty at least twice, but never for long.

    

By the summer of 1863, the war was changing shape. Confederate control in Mississippi was slipping, and the rumors in camp—of Sherman’s advance, of Union troops pressing toward Jackson—were no longer just whispers. They were warnings.

    

John Krimminger must have felt he had already given more than most. His body bore the toll: months in hospitals, shuffled from city to city. The war had taken his health, his faith, and I have to think, his belief in the cause itself.

On July 2, near Jackson, Mississippi, he found the courage to walk away. The record says “deserted.” But in John Krimminger’s journey, I’ve come to understand that word differently. It wasn’t cowardice. It was a quiet defiance, a turning toward something else.    

    

By early 1864, he reappeared—this time in blue. A private in Company I of the 1st East Florida Cavalry.

I’ve found no record of John’s activities between July and his reappearance in early 1864. Was he in hiding? Rebecca, in her testimony before the Congressional Committee, said she hadn’t seen him in three years—so he didn’t return home to Darlington. That gap still unsettles me. Where did he go? How did he survive? Silence, in this case, feels like its own kind of story. I’ve learned that not every road leaves footprints behind.

           

He had made his way to Fort Barrancas, a Union stronghold near Pensacola, where deserters and disillusioned Southerners found a second chance. It couldn’t have been easy. The journey was long, the decision heavier still.

Two months into his enlistment, he was appointed sixth sergeant. That tells me something about John. Even after all he’d endured, he brought discipline, steadiness, and perhaps a quiet resolve. 

He served under the Union flag for nearly nineteen months. Not as a traitor. Not as a hero. But as a man who had seen enough and chose a different road.

What happened in the months after July 1863 remains mostly silent in the records. But silence doesn’t mean absence. Somewhere between the lines—between the hospitals and the battlefield, between the cause he left and the one he joined—John Newton Krimminger made a choice. Not just to survive, but to begin again.

A New Life in New Troy

After the war, Dr. Krimminger didn’t return to South Carolina. He came to Florida—a state still raw from secession, defeat, and occupation. The land here was quiet but unsettled, like a field after a fire. He settled in New Troy, where the courthouse had been burned, many of the records scattered, or destroyed and the future still unsure. It wasn’t just a town rebuilding—it was a blank page. And maybe that’s what he thought he needed.

What did he see in Lafayette County—just after the war, just before Reconstruction—that made him want to call it home? The courthouse had been burned, the river trade disrupted, the land scarred by raids and loss. And yet, he came. Maybe it wasn’t land he sought, but legacy. A place where his skills as a physician—and perhaps as a reconciler—could matter. Maybe he saw Lafayette County not as a retreat, but as a frontier of healing, civic and personal. He didn’t return to Darlington, though he could have. Instead, he stepped into a place still smoldering, still raw, and took up leadership with startling speed. That doesn’t speak of accident. It speaks of intent.

He didn’t hide who he’d been. Confederate. Union. Farmer. Physician. Judge. He stepped into the center of 

things, not the margins. In 1867, he was elected to represent Lafayette and Taylor counties at Florida’s Constitutional Convention. That’s not a small thing. For a man who’d worn both uniforms, it was a kind of redemption—or maybe just a new chapter.

In 1869, he served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate. The rise was swift. The fall, quieter. He lost re-election in 1870. Politics seems to be that way. But the appointments kept coming—county judge, postmaster, superintendent of schools. He held them all, sometimes at once. The records show a man in motion, but I wonder if he ever stopped long enough to feel settled.