Histories

From an e-mail sent from George Francis James to his children on 11 January 2009. "Aunt Carol" is George's sister, Carol (James) Davis, "Grandma" and "mama" refers to George's mother Alma (Gebauer) James. Alma had recently been moved to a nursing home, so George and Carol had been cleaning out Alma's house.

"1/7/09 When we arrived in San Jose on Wednesday, Aunt Carol had been going through Grandma's things. She handed mama a medal and asked her if she knew anything about it. Mama told her no, I havent seen it before. Mama turned it over in the sunlight and she could see an engraving that said Aug Mackrodt GAR. 101, We were curious as on the front it has a U.S. shield with 5 different pictures on it and we couldn't figure out why a German would have a U.S. Medal. When we were done loading the trailer, we went to visit grandma. We showed her the medal and asker her about it. She said it belonged to her Great Uncle, her father's mother's brother and he was a musician in the U.S. Army. Our friend Ed Ottinger figured out the five emblems were Cavalry (2 crossed cannons), Marksmanship (2 crossed rifles) infantry (2 crossed swords), seamanship (an anchor), and we don't know the other but it looks like a Castle. We couldn't find the medal on the internet. We figured out it belonged to: Friedrich Wilhelm August Mackrodt. We did a search and found his enlistment records and also found him on the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census. We don't know Elizabeth Mackrodt's Maiden Name but know her father was from Massachusetts and her mother from California. We didn't find a marriage or death record. Anyone want to be a dectective? Had we found these things after my mom passed away, we probably wouldn't have found all this out! She is probably still here for a reason. Maybe there is more information to get from her yet! We thought all of you would enjoy this information..."