…with the insipid offerings on Discovery, such as the Story of Us and The Revolutionary War.
You know I do genealogy. And you know I’m American. It has not gone unnoticed by me that my ancestors were a mixed bag…and that in the minds of many we weren’t so much rebelling from England (the view King George took of the event) as dissenting from the way the English government was working. In effect, we weren’t fighting the English. Many of us were English.
And insipid programs that rehearse the same old children’s stories about the Pilgrims and the Indians and the horrid British, as if we were something else at the time…rather bother me.
So on this 4th of July, let me salute some of my ancestors who weren’t English: they were Dutch, who lived peacefully in New York, and who changed hands when the English and Dutch had a war: New York was ceded as part of the peace treaty.
Others of my ancestors belonged to the Powhatan tribe, who were getting along quite nicely before a band of fairly well-behaved Englishmen decided to land a boat on their shores. The Englishmen claimed the Powhatans’ land, but at least had the grace to marry their way into the community—before they claimed the rest of the continent.
Then there were the Quakers from Devon. Some of mine were part of the Quakers, who weren’t so much here for religious freedom as to avoid the gruesome fate of other people the Puritans ruling England from time to time were persecuting that week (it was Catholic v Protestant, and some who thought themselves holier than either—with really gruesome fates for the loser du jour: disemboweling alive, burning alive that sort of thing: what nice people! all in the name of their piousness)—
Our Pilgrim fathers—read Puritans—I had a few of those, too, named things like Temperance, mostly in Massachusetts—and thank goodness they had the good taste to take a hike from Salem during the witch trials. Or maybe they had had a feud with one of those bratty children who started it…who knows?
I had families half of which were in England and half in the colonies in 1776…and what were they to do?
I had a great-great-grandfather or two fighting on this and that side of the English Civil wars I and II, I had people running from the shelling of Gloucester; and I had people fighting in the various wars: the French and Indian Wars; Queen Anne’s War; the Revolutionary War; you name it.
I had people on both sides of the American Civil War, one of whom, yes, was a slaveholder who freed all his slaves and built them houses for their families at his own expense, and hired them thereafter for wages, because he had thought twice about the situation, and this was years before the Civil War. His son, my third-great grandfather, was a spy for the Confederacy.
I had people who wanted no part of the Civil War, and took the newly invented railroad out to Ohio and Missouri and hiked the rest of the way to get away from other people who wanted to kill civilians over politics.
My people in general ALL had relatives on this side and on that of every issue so nicely glossed over in these programs, and the issues, as always happens in real life, had a lot of fine print about who was involved on what side and why.
So let us celebrate the 4th, but let’s not hate anybody. You just never know who you’ll find out you’re related to.
“that red dirt road with the high sandstone sides” – let me guess – Where Py met Khym for the first time?
[now I am truly embarrassed. Did I get his name right? it has been a while since my last re-read…]
Heh. You got it right!
I truly wish my dad had written down his memories of growing up — and of the stories his dad told him. I didn’t really get to know my grampa, my one real childhood memory is of a kindly, very old man. Yet my grampa knew people all across two counties and they knew him, “Hello, Mr. W.” or “Hello, Everett.” He was not any kind of celebrity or public figure, just a respected friend and farmer, and good enough with reading and writing and “figuring” and surveying that he helped others with contracts and such, and instilled a love of learning into all his children alike, three girls and two boys, and was unusual enough to think girls and women ought to be taken as seriously as men and boys, to think and do and own property. He could have deeded the farm to my dad, but instead he divided it equally among his children. We had some recollections where my grandma talked, but those were done on cassette tapes, and we all know what time and heat do to cassettes. — but from that, I have some idea of how they grew up and their married life and my aunts’ and uncle’s and dad’s lives growing up. Heck, my dad put in electricity and indoor plumbing for them when he came back from the service (mid-1950’s).
My mother’s side of the family, there is part of the story of being Sooners that I know, but not all of it, because I last heard of it for a report in junior high. But the mere mention of “red dirt” or a storm cellar or hail or tornadoes, and I think of my Oklahoma relatives. — So a red dirt road, you could just as easily be talking about any of my great-uncles and great-aunts places. — One great-uncle was a remarkable man: he was a WWII POW of the Japanese. Did he come back hateful or reclusive, scarred by his time there? No. That man lived into this century, one of the sweetest, most loving guys you’d ever want to know. Somehow, he even managed to see his then-enemies as people somehow like himself. I like “foreign” cultures and languages. In his place, I don’t know if I would have come out of that so magnanimous. Heh… the rest of the family are more ornery regular folks. LOL.
CJ, I don’t think our families are related, as I don’t tend to recognize the places or people you’ve at times mentioned, but if our families ever did cross paths, then good. — But if places like Altus, Texas or Duncan, Oklahoma ring a bell for anyone, you’re welcome to say hello. 🙂 Hah, or Rose Hill, Virginia. — Now that town is so small, that if *anyone* even has seen it, I’d be surprised, and if they’re from around there, chances are, they are neighbors or relatives of my dad’s family.
I only went “up home” to my grampa and grandma’s farm about once a year, and my memory for some things isn’t sharp. But I know for sure, if I ever go through there again, I would recognize the particular bend before the old home place and the old land. I know it has probably changed drastically since the land was sold by each sibling, then onto a local couple who now farm there. (Heaven help ’em.) I’d have to have someone guide me to the family cemetary plots there, but the couple of visits my mom, dad, and I made, seeing all those relatives and neighbors, and seeing the dates and therefore knowing what befell them…they deserve to have their stories told, if anyone knows them.
CJ — I think it’s a great idea for you to write about your family history and make it available as a book, ebook, or on the web. I’d again say you’d be great writing a historical fiction novel.
My uncle Robert Edward (R.E. was how he was called) and his wife Jessie and daughters Jayne and Paula lived in Duncan. My parents were from Anadarko (so was R.E,) they used to live in Chickasha, and we lived in Lawton for some ten years. All very red dirt. 😉 Of which I inherited a small parcel, between Anadarko and the family farm. A very nice gentleman farms it, which is a good thing. 😉
Just a quick note to add to this discussion of memories. I forget how I found this site, but I like the questions it mentions and could be a jumping off spot to talk to family members. I have almost no oral history of my family. Being 2nd wife’s youngest and my father was 3rd wife’s youngest you either have loads of stories or almost none. I’m writing things down for my family, such as the JFK assination from a 10 year-olds perspective, and other historical events. I’ve probably posted this site before, but it bears repeating.
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/calendar/kitchen-memories.html
I did find some of my Mother’s side information in the wicked evil google books. Like why one family group (Stiles Family) left England in the 1630’s.
One of the things I like to do is trace old roads, see where they’ve been altered or rerouted, then find out why. There’s something bittersweet about finding routes that used to be important, but were cut off from the flow of traffic like oxbow lakes on a river. The obvious grand master of all this is, of course, Route 66.
I think part of my interest was formed by looking out the window on long car trips to visit my grandparents in southern Ohio. There was one section of road with an obviously older section paralleling it, sometimes weaving from one side to another, with houses still on it, some abandoned, some still inhabited. In a gully along the side of the road, you could even spot an old railroad track that went into a bricked up tunnel! I’m not sure if that’s archaeology, history or something else.
I know that kind of road. When the superhighways went in (in my memory) no few of these old state highways and county roads became derelict. Sometimes you’ll see a relict building. I recall passing places like Porter Hill and Richard’s Spur in Oklahoma. Then came the superhighway. They still exist. But back then, they looked like the ’30’s in a nutshell. You could imagine Bonnie and Clyde coming down that road…