Family Patriotism

One thing that I discovered doing my family tree is that we have a large number of veterans amongst our ancestors. And while we have obvious connections to World War 2 in our own recent generations, and links to the Revolutionary War in the ones further back, there are a few surprises throughout.
For example, on my father's side, there is a fellow named Robert Sherman Robinson, who served in the War of 1812. Being a child of the Illinois/Chicago Public Schools, I had no recollection of what the War of 1812 was about. This lead to lots of book reading about the war for me to understand his role in it. Did you know that this was was basically the "second Revolution" in which the British tried to take the colonies back? Our ancestor was from the Virginia militia, and served in the Artillery division. That means he fired cannons.
While I was living in Baltimore, there was lots of 1812 war history about, including historic places to see cannonballs still stuck in the walls from that very war. In addition, the War of 1812 and the attack the British made on the port city of Baltimore in 1814 was the inspiration for the "Star Spangled Banner" to be written.
So while I continue to study the movements of the artillery division that my ancestor served in, the research on the tree has lead to many revelations about America's history that we can be proud of.