On Ancestry.com I found a record from the Civil War Compiled Military Service Records (National Archives) for Edward A. Robinson in Company K, 16th Mississippi Infantry; it says he was inducted as a "Private" and discharged as a "Hospital Steward"; Box 232/Extraction 34/Record 3550. I believe the 16th was from Wilkinson County, and Edward is close enough to Edmund, that I think this man could be my great GF, Edmund Aaron Robinson of Woodville.....however, I find military records to be a LOT more complicated than I had ever thought they would be! I've been reading various postings and find the depth of knowledge on this site to be astounding!

Here are a few details about him...E A Robinson was the s/o two VT natives who founded Vermontville MI about 1836; he and his brothers were born there (1838-43) but moved back to VT as young children. His siblings, mother, aunt, and cousins traveled from VT & Troy NY to Woodville (Wilkinson County) every winter for several years before the CW, and one year, Edmund didn't return to VT. The family story is that he served in the Confederate Army of the Mississippi as a "surgeon's assistant" (his father was a medical doctor), and supposedly served at Shiloh, but we have no documentation of anything! We do know that he spent the rest of his life as a druggist. He married Kate Dillingham Elder in 1871; her mother (Annie Gore Dillingham) had come to MS from Augusta ME with her uncle/guardian (William Hannibal Dillingham); Kate's father(Edward J. Elder of Emmitsburg MD) was reportedly a tutor on a Woodvlile plantation in the 1830's-40's. Edmund died in Memphis in 1897 ofTB. So that's the background........

What should be my next step? My eternal gratitude for your assistance.

Ann Robinson McReynolds
Saint Louis