Hi friends, 

Please forgive me for not posting a blog last week.

If I'm frank, I can say that I didn't even miss it. But that's because the in-laws were in town. They visited our little family last week to celebrate my son and daughter's birthdays (those birthdays are 10 days apart). 

During their visit, we took the grandparents over to the Vicksburg National Military Park. It's a rather stunning historical site meant to preserve our national memory of the Civil War. While there we snapped photos in front of cannons, war memorials, and the carcass of the U. S. S. Cairo, an old ironclad that was sunk without one life lost [1]. Sometime in the 60s, they pulled the remains out of the Yazoo River and created the Gunboat and Museum at the battlefield. It's really impressive. 

Anyway, all that's to say we made memories as a family. I believe that creating new family history is just as important as studying the old. Maybe one day our descendants will argue over who is who in all those photos we took. Maybe not. 

I told the kids about my 3x great-uncle Solomon Robinson who was discharged from his civil war service at Vicksburg. In that way I did do some genealogy last Tuesday. 

Then I berated myself for not studying him enough before we left. I couldn't remember if he was part of the campaign or not, and had to hastily retrieve his pension information from the cloud. Turns out he was discharged there. I had been thinking he had been part of the siege, but his service didn't begin until after the battle. However, he was discharge in Vicksburg as I said earlier [2].  

The kids patiently waited for me to tell them what I knew about Uncle Sol and were amazed to have a family connection with something so significant. But no matter how amazed they were, those little factoids weren't as a cool or interesting as the cannons. 

As so we return to my confession. 

I didn't miss writing the blog last week. I mean, how could I? 

Writing a blog just wasn't going to be as cool as the cannons. 

But hopefully this little travelogue will make up for it. 

1. "USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum," National Parks Service, October 14, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/vick/u-s-s-cairo-gunboat.htm. 

2. Solomon C. Robinson (Pvt., Co. L, 10th Ind. Cav., Civil War), pension no. SC 491040, Case Files of Approved Pension Applications  . . . , 1861-1934; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veteran Affairs; National Archives, Washington D.C.