Roadtripping Through History is something I do often with all these blogs. I start with a story and see how far I can take it, kind of like the old Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" in those interesting newscasts he used to do.
This particular (I guess you could call it a thread) started with a story I wrote about in my Running the Blockade: Civil War Navy blog about five U.S. Navy Medal of Honor recipients buried in cemeteries around Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
I then found out when I looked for more information on each one, that there might have been confusion on one of the names as there was someone else with nearly the same name. His name was John Jones. Then the other man was John E. Jones. John Jones (buried in Portsmouth) got his Medal during the rescue of crewmembers of the sinking USS Monitor.
The John E. Jones got his for action on the USS Oneida at the Battle of Mobile Bay (along with seven other recipients from that ship). Well, the commander of that ship must have been quite busy writing out the recommendations and the Wikipedia article said the commander was C.V. Gridley.
The name Gridley immediately brought to mind the "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley" quote from George Dewey at the Battle of Mobile Bay in the Spanish-American War. Was this the same guy? As it turns out, he was, but he had not been the commander of the Oneida at the battle of Mobile Bay. However, he was on that ship as a junior officer, but not the commander of it.
And, that is how I have come to writing about that here.
In addition, earlier this month in this blog, I wrote about the USS Zafiro which transported the stricken with illness Gridley off the USS Olympia after the Battle of Manila Bay. Then that led to the Dewey Medals given to U.S. participants at that battle.
So, You Never Know Exactly Where You're Going to Go When You Roadtrip Through History. --Cooter
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