Thank you!  

Note the Far East characters and the words national decoration on the bottom of the base bar on the last picture.  Interesting.  

I think a similar was just sold for around $275.

As an incentive and reward for their service, the U.S. federal government granted bounty land to soldiers who fought in the Mexican-American War.  They could get 160 acres, and I suspect the reason the we are seeing a number of 2nd Missouri Cavalry guys, is one of them got land in Yolo County, and then his friends followed.     It would be interesting to see where the land these guys got is...there isn't much in much of Yolo County even today.

I'm putting together a shadow box on a guy who served in the Navy during WW2. Based on the document below, can someone provide an image of the sleeve patch I should look for? Thanks!  

The Fighting 69th (1940) Gung Ho! (1943) Jet Pilot (1957) Dive Bomber (1941)

It is interesting that half of the men in the Yolo County Association of Veterans of the Mexican War (listed in the document above) served with the 2nd Missouri Cavalry.  Really it should be 2nd Missouri "Cavalry".   This unit was commanded by Sterling Price, future Confederate General, and by all accounts a pompous rump.   General Kearny insisted this unit was the 2nd Missouri Volunteer Infantry.   Price preferred calling them Cavalry because it sounded grander.   Actually they were more like Mounted Infantry.   Anyway they made up part of Kearny's Army of the West and served during the war as garrison troops at Santa Fe, NM.   Many continued west to California after the war to participate in the Gold Rush.      Picture of Price from the Civil War.

Three of the Mountain Howitzers used by the Ordnance Department troops in Mexico are currently at the Frontier Army Museum at Fort Leavenworth, KS.