![]() Still, Mariani, who runs her own public relations company and has visited Gettysburg several times, is proud to be related to him “because of his leadership qualities. ![]() ![]() And after the war, he was a diplomat to Colombia and a leader in the preservation of Gettysburg as a national park, although he was eventually removed from monuments there because of allegations of misappropriation of funds. George Meade that led to much personnel loss. According to the Civil War Trust, which raises money to preserve the nation’s battlefields, he defied an order from Gen. That would not be the only battle he would fight - Sickles’ defining battle was Gettysburg, for which he got the Medal of Honor, even though opinion of his decision-making during the fray is mixed. But then a few years later, he reconciled with his wife, and no one wanted anything to do with him anymore. He got arrested and acquitted, and his career kept going. “There was a big personal, public blow up, and he shot him, and this tells you about the way the world was then,” Mariani says. Before Gettysburg, he made headlines when, having found out that his young wife was having an affair with Philip Barton Key II, district attorney of Washington, D.C., and the son of the author of what would become the National Anthem, killed him. Sickles was a womanizer who, during his life, was a congressman, the Ambassador to Spain and, of course, a Civil War general. Here’s what she - and the rest of the country who loved and hated him - knows. She went to Gettysburg and to the Library of Congress and got so excited about it that the rest of us did, too,” Mariani says. But when genealogy Web sites started, my Aunt Paula decided to investigate him and she got really invested. “We always knew about him, that he was hanging out there (in the family line). Harper’s Weekly once described him as “loved more sincerely, and hated more heartily, than any man of his day.”įor Denise Mariani and her family, he’s always been their colorful ancestor. There were also the ladies, the politics, the public shaming and that time he killed Francis Scott Key’s son. Sickles has a leg up on the other historic great-greats in this story, literally - his severed leg is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, along with the cannonball that shattered it during the Battle of Gettysburg, which accounted for the largest number of causalities in the Civil War.īut the lost limb was only one notable chapter of Sickles’ near-century of life. Her ancestor: Union General Dan Sickles (1819-1914) Sometimes it’s been a point of pride - but in at least one case, it was a hush-hush family secret. We talked to some Palm Beach County residents, who have found they have nationally notable ancestors. Most of our family trees have yielded branches that are famous (or even infamous) within our familial circles - Uncle Bob the war hero or Great-Great-Great Grandma Myrtle and her perhaps not entirely legal numbers running operation.īut what if your famous uncle was also one of everybody’s Founding Fathers? Or what if that little illegal side business was linked to one of the more infamous periods in our country’s crime history?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |