I think a lot of the counties in what is now the southern part of West Virginia did not participate in the 1864 election—since the people there still thought of themselves as part of Virginia. I had distant cousins who lived in that area during the war and served in Confederate units.Thanks. I didn't know about the 1864 election. This summer by chance I drove through two counties that were the subject of Virginia v. West Virginia (1871), Berkeley and Jefferson. I had just finished touring the Antietam/Sharpsburg battleground. It's pretty up there.
My great-grandfather was a 10-year-old boy living in Frederick Co., Va., near the border with Berkeley Co. (present-day state line between VA and WV), when the war started. According to my great-uncle, his son, he watched the battle of Bull Run from a cottonwood tree. Considering the distance, that's not likely, but there was a lot of fighting in that area (Winchester was taken and retaken many times), so he may have witnessed some of the local fighting.
To hear my great-uncle tell it, his father's father was the greatest war hero on the Confederate side. By the time I knew my great-uncle, he was in his late 80s and some of his accounts of his father and grandfather didn't seem very reliable--I haven't been able to verify them (apart from his grandfather having been a Confederate soldier--heard that also from my great-aunt).