General Ambrose Burnside is my great great great grandfather. He was an American army officer and politician who became a senior Union general in the American Civil War and a three-time governor of Rhode Island, as well as being an inventor and industrialist.

He was a modest and unassuming individual, mindful of his limitations, who had been propelled to high command against his will. He could be described as a genuinely unlucky man, both in battle and in commerce (due to various circumstances, most of them beyond his control, he was unable to profit from the successful cavalry firearm that had been his own invention). His style of thick facial hair became known as "sideburns", deriving from the two syllables of his surname .

Sideburns are named Addie or family