The story of Thomas North Carolina Legion as a reenactment group started in 1988 in the state of Ohio. I was commissioned and given authority to form a unit and chose to recreate the Legion based on the fact that my sergeant's great grandfather had served in the Legion as a Cherokee warrior. We decided that the Legion was the best unit to recreate because of the versatile nature of having representatives of all three branches of land military and the unique racial mixture of the soldiers. The Legion,serving as the 69TH North Carolina Infantry, was active in Ohio,Michigan,Indiana and Pennsylvania until I moved to Colorado in September of 1989,at that time the membership consisited of myself,Captain Paul E. Carstensen and our regimental surgeon, Major Jack Carstensen and our desire to establish the Legion as a reenactment group in Colorado.We started by setting up a Living History camp at the annual Lyons Good Ole Days Festival in Lyons,CO. and trying to recruit interested people to join. It took three years of apearing at Lyons and handing out flyers until the first new person joined the Legion that was our second in command, Lt.Randy Bullington. Then the next year we were joined by the man who is now our Corporal, Bob Milner and that is how the current command structure came into being. We are continuing to grow and are becoming more and more active as a group and our intent is to continue to grow and do at least one event per month from May through October and to try and establish activities such as a winter camp during the rest of the year. Our largest goal at the current time is to host a reenactment event somewhere here in Colorado, however there are events such as Nebraska City, Fort Kearney and Grand Island that we plan to keep as events that we attend regularly. In closing,as the Commanding Officer, please allow me to say that the Legion is open to ALL individuals interested in recreating the War of Northern Aggression and my philosophy about reenacting is that if there is historical justification for any impression you are free to do it as long as there is approval for your impression, and this philosophy is the foundation that Thomas North Carolina Legion is built on. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of the Legion, please contact Cpl. Milner and let him know. We look forward to meeting you and sharing the joy of reenacting with you! Deepest Regards, Captain Paul E. Carstensen Commanding, Thomas Legion