dual personalities

Tag: History

July 6, 2023

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Recently I was reading about Esther Forbes (June 28, 1891 – August 12, 1967), the American novelist and historian. She wrote a number of historical novels, but she is mostly remembered for writing the Newbery Medal winner Johnny Tremain, published in 1943. She also won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1942 for Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.

My grandmother, Mira Sargent, was about the same age as Esther and they grew up in the same social circle in Worcester, Massachusetts. Both were descendants of old Colonial families with roots in the seventeenth century. Esther attended Bancroft and Mira went to Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield. Their paths continued to cross throughout their lives–in New York City, Boston and back in Worcester. My father always said they were friends but who knows.

Anyway, I decided to read Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, although my expectations were low, having read other books by mid-century female authors of this ilk. How wrong I was! From the first paragraph I was engaged:

There had been week upon week of the cold grey fury of the North Atlantic, for it was mid-winter when the little refugee, Apollos Rivoire, made his crossing. At such a season only the hardiest of passengers ventured much above deck. Bunks were dank, bread wormy, beef tainted, and many of these small sailing ships never made port, but at least the Atlantic was crossed in great company. God brooded upon the face of these waters. His hand parted the mountainous waves. He upheld the ship. Even if one drowned, it was the Providence of God. Apollos did not drown. He entered Massachusetts Bay late in 1715 or early 1716.

Apollos Rivoire was the father of Paul Revere. He came to Massachusetts as a 13-year old Huguenot refugee, fleeing persecution in France. His family owned great vineyards, but they saw no future for him in France, so he was sent to America as an indentured servant who was apprenticed to learn the silversmith trade. I did not know that! As usual, there is a lot I do not know, but this book is filling in the blanks in a delightfully readable manner.

So read an old book; learn something new!

The painting at the top is by Albert Anker (1831-1910)

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July 5, 2023

Old dead white men (and women)

by chuckofish

Here’s a reminder that knowing your past will guide your future.

“…[W]e are probably the first generation in human history that doesn’t really know the communities from which we come. I can’t name any of my eight great-grandparents. (Perhaps you can, but I would ask, respectfully, what do you know about them?) As Alasdair MacIntyre has famously argued, we speak of justice with verve and passion but are unlikely to know what justice really means or from whom we inherit the very concept. We’re so eager to throw off the shackles of our received traditions that we’ve wholeheartedly loosed our roots from the loyal land and bound ourselves instead to that great banality of modern self-actualization, “you do you.”

I do know the names of my eight great-grandparents, although I admit I don’t know much about my great-grandmother Isabel Stanley Sargent’s line. I only know she was from Maine and that she left her husband and two children and fled to Chicago. She was a shocking skeleton in the family closet, but undoubtedly there was a lot more to that story. I have a fair knowledge of the rest of my great-grandparents compared, I suppose, to my contemporaries.

Since I retired I have had it in the back of my mind to “organize” all the genealogy notes and notebooks I have stored in my office. I tell myself I should write some kind of narrative account of our family. I know from experience researching that there is very little written down out there in the way of personal history and a lot of it is full of mistakes anyway. Nevertheless, anything written down and preserved is good, if not always helpful. I think of my mother’s cousin Jane who wrote “a family history…at the request of her brother” for the “elucidation of our children and grandchildren.” A noble effort it was, which my mother and her sister Susanne tore apart and corrected and generally ridiculed. True, Jane made a few undeserved snarky comments about their mother, but beyond that and the multiple mistakes, it is still a valuable resource (with pictures).

So we shall see if I can get started. Starting is always the hard part.

Meanwhile my grandkids celebrated the 4th in patriotic red-white-and-blue style…

Cuties.

*The ODWM pictured is Joseph Warren Sargent, my great-great grandfather.

4 Comments
May 30, 2023

Lest we forget

by chuckofish

Yesterday morning I got up bright and early and drove with daughter #1 to Florissant, MO to the historic Cold Water Cemetery, the oldest Protestant cemetery west of the Mississippi still in use, for an annual DAR event. There are some Revolutionary War veterans buried in this cemetery, so the DAR has been caretaking the cemetery for 60 years. We enjoyed the ceremony, especially the Lewis and Clark Fife and Drum Corps…

It was good to see some twelve-year old boys (probably all home-schooled) interested in history. We also liked these guys from the Militia de San Carlos and the Sons of the Revolution…

They gave a musket salute as well.

And we got to ride in one of these “shuttles” down to the cemetery…

It was almost like being on a hayride!

As is my tradition, I also watched They Were Expendable (1945), which is the best war movie ever.

Listen, son: you and I are professionals. If the manager says, “Sacrifice”, we lay down a bunt and let somebody else hit the home runs. We know all about those destroyers out of commission, tied up around San Diego. We could use them here. But they’re not around. They won’t be. Our job is to lay down that sacrifice. That’s what we were trained for, and that’s what we’ll do. Understand?

So keep showing up. Pay attention. Pray hard for your country.

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May 24, 2023

Watching the river flow

by chuckofish

Today we toast Bob Dylan on his 82nd birthday! Huzzah!

Recently, when I awaken in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep, I have been re-reading Chronicles, Volume I by BD. He is one of the best-read guys you could know. He never wasted his free time in his youth, but read whatever was available on the bookshelves of whoever’s apartment he was crashing in. And he remembered what he read.

I read the biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican. He lived in the early part of the 1800s and was quite a character. He’s from Gettysburg and he’s got a clubfoot like Byron. He grew up poor, made a fortune and from then on championed the weak and any other group who wasn’t able to fight equally. Stevens had a grim sense of humor, a sharp tongue and a white-hot hatred for the bloated aristocrats of his day. He wanted to confiscate the land of the slaveholding elite, once referred to a colleague on the floor of the chamber as “slinking in his own slime.” …He got right in there, called his enemies a “feeble band of lowly reptiles who shun the light and who lurked in their own dens.” Stevens was hard to forget. He made a big impression on me, was inspiring. Him and Teddy Roosevelt, maybe the strongest U.S. president ever. I read about Teddy, too. He was a cattle rancher and a crime buster, had to be restrained from declaring war on California–had a big run in with J.P. Morgan, a deity figure who owned most of the United States at the time. Roosevelt backed him down and threatened to throw him in jail.

Good stuff. So read some history, some poetry, and listen to some BD today: pick a good one.

Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet 
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burnin' coal
Pourin' off of every page
Like it was written in my soul
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May 18, 2023

‘That fearful sound of “fire” and “fire,”/Let no man know is my Desire.’*

by chuckofish

Today is the 174th anniversary of the great fire which pretty much destroyed the St. Louis waterfront–levee, wharf and business section–back in 1849. Fifteen blocks became engulfed in the firestorm. Can you even imagine?

At the time of the fire, the population of St. Louis was around 63,000, and the city was about ¾ miles wide with three miles of riverfront. A fire alarm sound at 9:00 p.m. on May 17, 1849 when the paddle-wheeled steamboat “The White Cloud” caught fire. It was located on the river at the foot of Cherry Street and St. Louis’ volunteer Fire Department immediately responded. Unfortunately, the moorings that were holding the steamboat burned through, allowing the burning White Cloud to drift down the Mississippi River, eventually causing 22 other steamboats as well as several flatboats and barges to catch fire.

From there, the flames from the burning boats jumped to buildings on the shore, and soon everything on the waterfront levee was burning for four blocks. After moving westward to Main Street and crossing Olive Street, the fire completely gutted the three blocks between Olive and 2nd Street. It also went as far south as Market Street. Finally the fire subsided after the Fire Department blew up six buildings. The fire was contained after 11 hours. In all, 430 buildings were destroyed, 23 steamboats along with over a dozen other boats were lost, and three people died including Captain Thomas B. Targee who was killed while trying to blast the fire break.

(Daguerreotype by Thomas Easterly. Missouri Historical Society Collections)

Let’s not forget that this was also the year of the cholera epidemic which decimated the city. Good grief! But as is often the case, the tragedy redefined St. Louis and certain reforms, such as legislating for brick buildings and the development of a safe water supply, were put in place. The city was rebuilt and the population jumped to 77,580 residents in 1850, which translated into a 372.8% increase from the 1840 census.

In other news, Ida is four months old!

*Anne Bradstreet wrote this poem after her home in Massachusetts burned to the ground in 1666–read the entire poem here.

5 Comments
April 26, 2023

Just another Wednesday–more things of minor consequence

by chuckofish

Today we toast Kevin James and Channing Tatum on their birthdays!

In case you were wondering, they did actually make a movie together. The Dilemma (2011) directed by Ron Howard is not a great movie, but you might want to give it a whirl. I am always in the mood for these two.

Today is also the anniversary of the day in 1865 when John Wilkes Booth was surrounded in a barn in Maryland and killed. And, hey, Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song about it.

Meanwhile Ida is crushing tummy time…

And here’s a poem: “Days” by Billy Collins–

Just another Wednesday–make it a good one.

3 Comments
April 11, 2023

The shape of the world

by chuckofish

Today we celebrate the crowning in 1689 of William III and Mary II in London as King and Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Huzzah! This occasion inspires me to want to watch Captain Blood (1938) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

We all cheer, “Aye”.

It is interesting that in 1938 they could make a movie about Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes and the Glorious Revolution and people could actually follow the story line. I doubt that is the case nowadays or at least Hollywood no longer makes that assumption. Well, what ho, c’est la vie.

You will recall that a few years later in their reign on February 8, 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England signed the charter for a “perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences” to be established in the Virginia Colony as “The College of William and Mary in Virginia.” The first chancellor was, of course, Henry Compton, Bishop of London, who had crowned them.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Mr. Smith got very dirty cavorting on the driveway on Sunday…

…and was quite a mess. He had to have a bath–always a two-person job–so the OM was shanghaied into helping with that.

So a toast to William and Mary, Captain Blood, Henry Compton, current Comptons, and dirty dogs everywhere.

And this made me laugh:

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April 3, 2023

Postcards from the weekend

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? Ours was punctuated by a lot of weather disparities which we are kind of used to in the midwest. Thankfully the really bad stuff went around us this time.

On Saturday daughter #1 and I took part in a DAR “field trip” to the historic Daniel Boone home in the rolling hills of wine country overlooking the beautiful Femme Osage Valley. I had been to the house back in the 1960s when I was a child and again in the 1990s when my own children were small. It is a lovely 1810 home built of native limestone.

I was surprised to find that the nearly 300-acre site now includes not only the historic Daniel Boone home, but the adjoining Village historic site, and surrounding property which was given to the people of St. Charles County by Lindenwood University in 2016. I’m sure I knew that but I had forgotten. The home and property now is called The Historic Daniel Boone Home at Lindenwood Park. The dozen buildings in the village were moved there, originating from within 50 miles of the property, and include several other houses, a general store, a schoolhouse, a church, and a grist mill. It is extremely well done.

Unfortunately, as you can see from these photos, it was an unexpectedly cold, gloomy and very windy morning! Boy, were we cold!

After our tour, we all hustled to our cars and drove down the road to the Defiance Ridge Winery where we had reservations for lunch. We warmed up and enjoyed a convivial time. As always at mid-MO wineries there was live entertainment and a happy crowd.

I also enjoyed becoming reacquainted with the legendary frontiersman who really was quite the exceptional guy. And as you know, this is a kind of guy that really appeals to me.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, moving here in 1799 when it was still part of Spanish Louisiana and a pretty wild place. He lived here for twenty years and died on September 26, 1820, in the home of his son Nathan Boone on Femme Osage Creek which we visited.  (How he lived to the ripe old age of 85, leading such a life as he did, is amazing.)

Boone was buried next to his wife Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813.The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway’s home about two miles from present-day  Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones’ remains were disinterred and reburied in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone’s remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone’s tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had corrected the error. Boone’s Missouri relatives, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake and allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. No contemporary evidence indicates this actually happened, but in 1983, you may recall, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone’s skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced it might be the skull of an African American. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone’s remains. But as our guide said, the Boones are both in heaven, so what does it matter?

(“Daniel Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap” by George Caleb Bingham, collection of Washington University)

Yesterday, of course, was Palm Sunday.

“There was a vast multitude crying ‘Hosanna’ … But Christ at that time had but few true disciples; and all this was at an end when he stood bound, having a mock robe put on, and a crown of thorns; when he was derided, spit upon, scourged, condemned, and executed. Indeed, there was a loud outcry respecting him among the multitude then, as well as before; but of a very different kind: it was not ‘Hosanna, hosanna,’ but ‘crucify him, crucify him.’” (Jonathan Edwards)

Onward to Easter.

5 Comments
February 22, 2023

This and that

by chuckofish

Today we honor the first president of the United States, George Washington on his 291st birthday.

We will also toast the artist Rembrandt Peale, who was also born on this day in 1778. In 1795 at the age of 17 he painted the above portrait of Washington. Impressive, I think.

Today is also the birthday of actor/producer Sheldon Leonard (1907-1997) who you would recognize immediately by his heavy New York accent. He played Nick the bartender in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)…

…along with countless gangsters, various Damon Runyon types, the occasional American Indian, and even J. Edgar Hoover before becoming a very successful television producer of shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Spy and so on.

As far as I know, he never played George Washington, although he did bear a certain resemblance to him.

Maybe I’ll watch To Have and Have Not (1944) in which Leonard plays Lt. Coyo (in the boater)…

Well, a toast is in order for all three men, especially G.W., the father of our great country.

And for Jimmy Carter, 39th president and Sunday School teacher, we offer this prayer:

Be near me when I am dying,

O show thy cross to me;

And for my succor flying,

Come, Lord, to set me free:

These eyes, new faith receiving,

From Jesus shall not move;

For he who dies believing,

Dies safely, through thy love.

–Medieval poem, translated by Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) and James W. Alexander (1804-1859)
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February 7, 2023

“We’re about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere.”

by chuckofish

Today we celebrate the birthday of John Deere (1804-1886), American blacksmith, inventor and manufacturer, who founded Deere and Company. Deere hailed from Vermont and attended Middlebury College. He moved to Illinois and invented the first commercially successful steel plow in 1837 by fashioning a Scottish steel saw blade into a plow.

(Early John Deere plow, circa 1845, made in Grand Detour, Illinois, displayed at the Henry Ford Museum)

Prior to Deere’s steel plow, most farmers used iron or wooden plows to which the rich Midwestern soil stuck, so they had to be cleaned frequently. The smooth-sided steel plow solved this problem and greatly aided migration into the American Great Plains in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

By 1855, Deere’s factory had sold more than 10,000 such plows. It became known as “The Plow that Broke the Plains” and is commemorated in a historic place marker in Middlebury, Vermont.

Deere & Company ranked No. 84 in the 2022 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations.

The John Deere tractor has, of course, become an icon of a certain way of life and has been glorified in many great country songs by the likes of Kenny Chesney, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Keith Urban, and Joe Diffie. But I like this one by Josh Thompson–“Way Out Here”:

(Thompson co-wrote the song with David Lee Murphy and Casey Beathard.)

We won't take a dime if we ain't earned it
When it comes to weight, brother we pull our own
If it's our backwoods way of living you're concerned with
Well you can leave us alone
Cause we're about John Wayne, Johnny Cash and John Deere
Way out here

So let’s toast John Deere tonight and my people Way Out Here.

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