Memorial Day 2025 + What I Learned About Robert Todd Lincoln
Like some Americans, we have the day off to commemorate Memorial Day.
If the weather cooperates, we usually ride our bikes to a nearby town to watch a Memorial Day parade. I kind of miss the days when my kids were little and got so excited to see a firetruck in a parade. Now, it’s just me getting excited. Ha!
The other thing I get excited about is history. It’s so much more interesting to me now that I’m older a more seasoned human being. It’s also humbling how much I do not know.
For instance, I have not given much thought to Abraham Lincoln’s children until this week. The only one to survive into adulthood was Robert Todd Lincoln.
In a wild twist of coincidence, Robert was once saved from injury or death by Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth’s brother. WHAT?!?! This happened before President Lincoln’s assassination and he publicly recounted the story in a 1909 letter. He had lost his footing on a train platform and Edwin Booth yanked him back to safety. (source)
Robert served as a captain under Ulysses S. Grant toward the end of U.S. Civil War. It appears he wanted to serve earlier, but his mom was very against the idea. Finally, and at the request of President Lincoln, he was placed on Grant’s staff to keep him out of harm’s way. Robert was present at Appomattox when Robert E. Lee surrendered. (source)
Speaking of Robert E. Lee, when the Civil War began, Lee abandoned his estate in Virginia. The U.S. government seized the land and turned it into what is now Arlington National Cemetery. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this seizure illegal. A settlement was reached where the government would buy the property from the Lee family for $150,000 instead of exhuming and moving the dead. Robert was the U.S. Secretary of War at the time and was the government’s representative at the ceremony when this transfer occurred. I thought this was very apropos to the situation. Robert is also buried at Arlington. (source)
The last, kind of freaky thing I learned about Robert Todd Lincoln is that not only was his dad assassinated, he was an eyewitness to the assassination of James A. Garfield and present at the assassination of William McKinley. (source) I would think that any one of those things would mess you up a little, but three? That’s a heavy burden.
Sometimes I think my life is hard. Then I read about other people’s lives or think about the soldiers who died serving in the armed forces and their families and I am suddenly glad for my own problems.
One thing that is not a problem is that I’ll be taking the rest of the week off the blog to spend with the family. I’ll be back next Monday with a fresh, new blog post. In the meantime, you can follow along with what we are up to over on Instagram or Facebook.
Happy Memorial Day.
If you’d like another blog post to tide you over until next week, try one of these!
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