I always enjoyed “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” but my sharpest memory of her has to do with General Stonewall Jackson, of all people!  Before I wrote The Real Lincoln, published fifteen years ago this March, I was quite the “Civil War” history buff.  I had read hundreds of books about all the battles, generals, etc.; signed up for a lecture series at the Smithsonian in D.C. where James McPherson and all the card-carrying members of the Lincoln Cult held court; attended academic conferences; and even went on some guided tours of battlefields in Virginia and Gettysburg, Pa.

One of my expeditions was to Winchester, Virginia.  I always loved that part of the country — “Mosby’s Confederacy” to “Civil War” buffs.  Then there’s New Market, and Lexington, . . . .  While in Winchester I visited the house that is still standing which was the headquarters of Stonewall Jackson’s famous “Valley Campaign” where he defeated several U.S. armies several times the size of his, culminating with one of the most famous victorious flanking maneuvers in all of military history, the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Anyway, when I walked through the front door of Stonewall’s headquarters, which is now a museum, there were two giant portraits on the wall — of Stonewall Jackson and Mary Tyler Moore!  It turns out that the home was owned by a physician, a Dr. Moore, who was Mary Tyler Moore’s great grandfather. She had donated the funds for the renovation of the house so that it could be restored to the way in was in the 1860s, right down to the wallpaper.  Rest in Peace, Mary.

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