if you take away the e, it's also a delicious drink and a paper company

July 3, 1863 marked the last day of fighting of the Battle of Gettysburg. George Gordon Meade, the general for the north, defeated the south and sent the Confederates running. This is an important day for me, as George Gordon Meade is my great-great-great uncle (technically I am not sure how many great’s are involved). Great Uncle George provided both my father and me with our middle names, although I don’t really know how much evidence we have of that. Allegedly there is a picture of Meade holding my dad’s grandmother when she was a baby or something. Whatever the evidence was, it was not enough to win me a scholarship for Civil War descendents that I applied for one time, even though I had a “very well-written cover letter.” Anyways I guess at some point a Meade married an Edmonds and life has never been the same since.

So Meade had not been in charge very long when he took on that sonofabitch Robert E. Lee. But it was a turning point in the war, and family lore has it (or, as my dad likes to say a lot) that if Meade had done a better job following Lee after the battle, he could have definitively won the war and then he would have been the 18th president instead of Ulysses S. Grant. But because he kind of hesitated, Grant was able to come in and really be the shining star at the end there. Did he take the credit from Meade? I’m too polite to say. But you know, we were kind of close there to having our name on money and the like.

When I was a kid, we took a family vacation to Gettysburg and apparently I caused some controversy because I fell quite in love with Abraham Lincoln. Instead of taking an interest in the General Meade statues (and Gettysburg is definitely the only place you can take advantage of the Meade connection), I was more interested in having my picture with the Lincoln statues and buying books about Lincoln in the gift shops and just talking and talking about Mr. Lincoln. Anyways, one day I’ll go back and take more of an interest in Meade. Because we behaved at Gettysburg, we got to go to Hershey Park!

Fun facts about George Gordon Meade:
• He was born in Cadiz Spain
• After fighting in the Mexican-American war he designed lighthouses
• His horse was named Old Baldy