My Tragic Boyd Blood

Aside

On my father’s side I come from a long line of Boyds. So far so good. But things happen to Boyds that make me want to look over my shoulder now and then just for having Boyd blood.

Of course, things happen to every family, but when they happen to Boyds they tend to be so big or tragic or astonishing that they are recorded in history books.

This story tells only one of them.

Starting with Robert dictus de Boyd in 1262, the Scottish Boyds ascended to nobility…were given a castle…were accused of treason…lost their castle…were literally stabbed in the back…regained Royal favor and a few more castles…were imprisoned in the Tower of London…executed… mortified… regained favor again…and were generally kicked about like royal hacky sacks for some 500-odd years.

Then, in 1746 Sir William Boyd was executed for attempting to take the British Crown. cabin-in-the-wilderness-lake-georgeMeanwhile, half a world away in the wilds of Pennsylvania, John and Nancy Boyd were about to have their lives ripped apart.

In the mid-1700s my Scots-Irish ancestors came to America in search of a place where the land would sustain them.

Where they could build a home, raise a family, and live in peace, far from the volatile mess in their homeland.

the-comforts-of-homeJohn Boyd and Nancy Urie thought they found it in the unbroken wilderness of Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley.

They cut their plot of land from the forest, built a log cabin, and commenced living the hard but independent life of a frontier family.

John was a farmer, and a few miles away lived his neighbor, John Stewart, a weaver.

the-french-lessonOn February 10, 1756, John and his oldest son, William, started out for Stewart’s to buy a web of cloth.

With five active children and a new one on the way, Nancy Urie Boyd needed plenty of cloth to sew, one stitch at a time, into clothes.

David Boyd was a responsible boy of 13, and after his father left for Stewart’s, his mother sent David out to chop wood.

He took his hatchet, and his little brother John, who was six, went along to pick up chips.

cherokee-scouting-fort-duquesneTheir two sisters, Sallie and Rhoda, ten and seven, stayed inside with their mother and little brother.

David got busy with the wood, and his hatchet rang out through the forest.

He put all his concentration on placing the hatchet perfectly straight into the log, splitting it right through the middle.

Taking of captive babyHe was concentrating so hard, in fact, that he didn’t hear the Iroquois Indian who had walked right up to him.

But little John did, and he screamed. David turned, but it was too late.

The Iroquois grabbed David by his belt, threw him over his shoulder, and ran off into the forest.

John was snatched the same way, and in seconds the two boys disappeared into the trees.

Within moments Sally and Rhoda and their little brother, not yet three, were taken, and all five of them were brought together a short ways off.

chase-womanThe Natives instructed the children to run.

As he ran, David looked back to see his agonized mother standing before their home in flames, her hands raised to the heavens, praying, “O God, be merciful to my children going among these savages.”

The party of Natives that took the Boyd children also took their mother after setting the cabin to flames.

They drove the party on until the pregnant mother and smallest child could go no more, and so they were killed along the trail.

Boone_abductionThe children were traumatized. But they did as their captors told them, running on the trail, always running, and staying silent.

And so they survived and were taken hundreds of miles into the Ohio Territory, and there they were separated and given to different tribes.

But they were not made to be prisoners in the way we usually understand the term.

rice-gatherersYou would think that a captor brutal enough to slaughter a babe before his mother and a mother before her children could not show humanity.

But the Boyd children were adopted by the community and given new parents who taught the children this different way of life.

They ate and slept alongside these Iroquois and Delaware people.

They helped to hunt or prepare food, to care for babies and elders, sew shirts, haul firewood, prepare herbal medicine.

Tthe-tannerhey learned lessons of the forest and the stars and the animals. They became what people of the day called white Indians.

After living in the tribe for four years, David Boyd’s adoptive Delaware father decided it was time to return him to his white family.

David hesitated. This had become his new family, and he liked his new life.

He went reluctantly and was reunited with his father, John Boyd.

Twice thereafter he attempted to flee back to his Delaware family, but was brought back each time, and eventually he married a white woman, settled down, and had ten children.

Rhoda Boyd was rescued by the famous captive hunter, Colonel Bouquet.

Sarah Columbia Boyd Berryman.border.rBut on the trip to Fort Pitt, where she was to be reunited with family, she escaped to her Native family, and never returned to white society.

Sallie was returned to her father on February 10, 1764. John was returned on November 15 that same year, along with his brother, Thomas.

That was exactly 250 years ago. I don’t know of any Boyd tragedies of the kind that make history that have happened since then. My family left the Boyd line behind with my great-grandmother, Sarah Columbia Boyd.

Perhaps the Boyd family can rest now.

There are numerous differing accounts of the Boyd capture. I chose to follow what seems the most credible source, the book Setting All the Captives Free, by the scholar, Ian K. Steele.

“Mules are Always Boasting that their Ancestors are Horses.”

“Mules are always boasting that their ancestors are horses.”

I read that somewhere and busted out laughing. It’s true, isn’t it? And mules aren’t the only ones who do it. I do it. You do it. We all do it.

Harris - Napolean's horse

Napoleon’s horse.

And it’s nothing to be sheepish about either. It’s easy to understand why we light up when we find an impressive, well-known ancestor.

At its most basic, it’s because we all like a good story. Life is just a series of interconnected stories. And telling those stories is the basis of communication.

The joke, “Mules are always boasting that their ancestors are horses” is about communication. So I’ll keep my comments to the way we communicate our interest in genealogy to others.

Man O'War

Man o’War, one of the greatest racehorses of all time. In his career he only lost one race.

When we tell people that our ancestor is a “horse” – someone who impresses people, like George Washington or Marie Antoinette or Man O’War (see photo at right), we’ve suddenly got a conversation. We’ve made a connection.

They know just enough about that historical person to be “pre-interested.”

Conversation is about finding topics of common interest, after all, and if you don’t have anything to say except that you’re related to a person who lived a long time ago, the only response you’ll get is the back of your dinner partner’s head as he turns to talk with the person on his other side.

But talking about your “horses” isn’t all about impressing other people. In fact, it’s not even primarily about impressing other people.

Copenhagen, horse of the Duke of Wellington.

Copenhagen, horse of the Duke of Wellington.

My eyes glazeth over after a spell spent double-checking demographics on the umpteenth ancestor in my family tree.

If you’re at all human, you probably feel the same.

We’re like the dinner partner. We don’t want to bore ourselves. Saying you’re related to Sir Isaac Newton (as I’ve been saying since I was a child) is just a shorthand way of telling someone how interesting, how rewarding it is to research your family’s history.

But unlike our fictional dinner partner, we’re just as interested in the no-names as we are the famous ones.

I’m every bit as interested in my ancestor the Reverend John Fitch, who is not well known, as I am in Isaac Newton.

But I can’t expect anyone else to be interested in him…unless I know enough about him to weave an interesting story. I know what gets a reaction – and follow-on questions – and what doesn’t.

Theodore Roosevelt and his horse, Little Texas, who led the charge up San Juan Hill.

Theodore Roosevelt and his horse, Little Texas, who led the charge up San Juan Hill.

In fact, I’m more interested in the good Reverend Fitch, because his story is not well known. I had to work hard to find out that he moved a congregation into the wilderness of Connecticut in the mid-1600s. That he was a friend of Uncas, the chief made famous in “Last of the Mohicans,” and that he helped get Mohicans on the Colonists’ side in King Philip’s War.” That’s a story or few.

We genealogists have to be obsessed, otherwise we won’t find anything more interesting than dates and names.

We are more than kin connectors or clan catalogers, family finders, or pedigree-ophiles.

Silver and Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger saved a wild horse from an enraged buffalo, and in gratitude the horse gives up his freedom to become the Lone Ranger’s faithful steed, Silver.

We are storytellers, and we have to be blood hounds for the details, because therein lies the story.

I’m going to keep looking for the horses in my past. I’ll no doubt find some jackasses* as well, but I bet a few of them will make interesting stories too.

Note: A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, or jackass.

 

Least Popular Baby Names for 2014

My seventh great grandmother was Fear Brewster, daughter of Elder William Brewster of Mayflower fame. Puritan girl.GIF

Fear’s siblings were named Love, Wrestling, Patience, and Jonathan.

Jonathan was apparently named before the Brewsters got their hands on the Geneva Bible, which became the primary Bible translation used by the Puritans (and Shakespeare).

For some reason the Puritans decided it would be a good idea to tag their children by the Bible’s translated names. This is why More-Fruit and Hate-Evil were trendy names in the 1600s.

Where did these names come from, you ask? Why, from the back pages of the Geneva Bible, where there was a handy list of names that appear in the Old Testament, along with their English translations.

I presume that Mr. and Mrs. Brewster then did what so many others did in naming their baby Puritans. They turned to the back of their Bible and ran down the list. Puritan charcoal drawing

They could have named their beautiful baby girl, Eschew-Evil, as a fellow Puritan did. But they decided their precious dumpling would be better named, “Fear.”

It was a totally appropriate name. Really.

Not because she was a devilish newborn, though.

In fact, it really had nothing at all to do with the child that would carry this advertisement for her whole life.

The commonly told story of how Fear got her name is that she was born during a time when the Puritans were holding secret religious meetings in Nottinghamshire, England.

Since the Puritan faith was essentially outlawed by English law, its practitioners could be arrested and tried if found out.

Thus, Fear got her name from her parents’ anxiety over getting busted by the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Kind of a bummer moniker, if you ask me.Pretty Puritan.GIF

Fear’s brother, Wrestling, didn’t have it quite so bad.

Wrestling is a translation of Jabbok, and does not come with the ominous presumptions that Fear does.

In comparison to either of those, though, Patience and Love had it easy.

As a matter of fact, all four of them had it easy compared to their fellow Puritan children, More-Fruit, Faint-Not, or, horribly, No-Merit or Sorry-for-Sin.

Or, for that matter, my mother, Ruth, whose name translates to Drunk, according to “Hitchcock’s New and Complete Analysis of the Holy Bible.” She does like the little hot toddy now and then, come to think of it, even at 93.

But Drunk? I think not. (And besides, the Hebrew translation means “Friend,” which is much preferable as a name, I think.)

If you’re having a baby, and think it would be neat to have a Biblical name that’s translated from its original language, here are a few suggestions, from Professor Hitchcock’s 1869 list:

Dust (Ophrah)
Perfection (Salma)
Little (Paul)
Sheep (Rachel)
Asked of God (Samuel)Elizabeth Freake
No Glory (Ichabod)
Trouble (Jabez)
Building Me (Bunni)
Confession (Judith)
Gift of God (Nathaniel)
The Father’s Joy (Abigail)
Dunghill (Dimonah)
Rebellion (Miriam)
Iniquity of Trouble (Beth-aven)
Devoted to Destruction (Hermon)
A Dog, or A Crow, or A Basket (Caleb)
Who Becomes Bitter (Martha)
House of Affliction (Bethany)
Father of a Great Multitude (Abraham)
Mountain of Strength (Aaron)

You can find Hitchcock’s Biblical Names and their Meanings here.Salem Puritan.GIF The list is a 58-page searchable pdf with many hundreds of names.

Or, there’s a more conveniently searchable list, along with more detailed information on name origins, here.

Take a minute to scan it and maybe you’ll find your perfect baby name.

I don’t recommend Fear, though.

My seventh great-grandmother Fear Brewster Allerton died early.

Possibly of fright.

I’m Finally Embracing My Scots-Irish Ancestry

I’ve never embraced my Scotch-Irish ancestry.

In the first place, my mother always emphasized that the word is “Scots,” not “Scotch.” I’m prettyturnbull-s-whiskey-of-hawick-scotland sure it’s because she disliked Scotch’s association with whiskey. And she never hyphenated “Scots” with the “Irish” part.  To her, our ancestors were purely Scottish, and the fact that they passed through Ireland for a generation or two was of negligible consequence. Irish meant Catholic to Presbyterian her, and we assuredly were not Catholic, thank you very much, and here you can see where comes all the trouble in the Isles of England.

But the main reason I never embraced the Scots-Irish is because any time that designation is mentioned it seems to be preceded by “The Fighting.” I don’t find that embraceable. A certain segment of Scots-Irish Americans, led lately by former Secretary of the Navy, Jim Webb, likes to proudly point to the Scots-Irish propensity to, as he says, mistrust government and bear and use arms. Butler_Lady_Scotland_for_EverHe even wrote a book called, “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America.”

If the Scots-Irish are so damn testy, where are all of Scotland’s wars? Huh?

Webb and his cohorts say the Scots-Irish have “a propensity” to mistrust government and bear and use arms. All “a propensity” means is “a prejudice.” A propensity to mistrust means that however a person decides to act, the decision is already weighted toward mistrust; the deck is stacked against trust. Completely objective people do not have “a propensity” to believe a certain way, no matter what the evidence says.

battle-of-king-s-mountain-south-carolina-1780-american-revolutionNow, don’t go all political on me. There’s no political subtext meant here. Honestly, if Webb and others are right, I’m glad the Scots-Irish were around to save our butts in the Revolutionary War. (But then, if three quarters of the Rebel Army was Scots-Irish, as he points out, how do you explain the South losing the Civil War? …Just askin’.)

You know, it takes (at least) two sides to make a war. Nearly all Scotland’s wars were fought with the English, but we don’t go around calling them, “The Fighting English,” do we?

A little background might help here.

andrew-carrick-gow-cromwell-at-dunbar-1650When the Scottish people began their several hundred year migration to America, they had just spent 700 years battling the English. No kidding. 700 years! Finally, in the early 1700s, Scotland’s James I became king and unified Great Britain. James decided to stock Ireland with Protestants from Scotland, and the Scots were only too happy to oblige because they were just coming out of a decade-long famine and hoped for better lives elsewhere. Their new lands were in Northern Ireland, where they were immediately seen as the enemy by the Catholics opposed to their religion and infringement on Ireland’s lands.

So far we’ve tallied 700 years of war, a ten-year famine, and now 150 or so years of strife within Northern Ireland. But there’s more.

frontier-father-reading-to-his-children-by-firelight-1800sThe American Colonies were prospering, but they had problems with the Natives. (And the Natives had problems with them!) Natives kept attacking the towns and settlements, and the situation was particularly bad in those parts of the Colonies that bordered the frontier. So the secretary of state of Pennsylvania thought up a clever solution. He would create a human buffer between his colony’s towns and the frontier. And who better to be border buffers than the fighting Scots-Irish. So he offered free land to lure immigrants, who were already eager to get out of Ireland.woman-weeping-outside-a-log-cabin-in-ruins

Those poor Scots-Irish. An entire people suffering from “soldier’s heart,” a sort of constant anxiety first described in Civil War veterans. They couldn’t catch a break.

People become conditioned to their environments. Said a different way, your environment can make you a different person. If they had just come out of 860 years of peace instead of war, maybe Jim Webb’s book would be called “The Peace-Loving Scots-Irish.”

small_house-on-the-hudsonMy mother’s mostly-Scottish family is rural Virginia, though by what evidence I’ve seen so far they came by way of Jamestown, not by the well-traveled Scots-Irish route via Pennsylvania and down through the Ohio Valley. The character of my mother’s family is gentle, communal, earthy, peace-loving, home-loving, and not particularly religious or political.

Since getting interested in genealogy I’ve come to better embrace my one quarter Scots-Irishness. I can move beyond media-friendly monikers like “Born Fighting.” ernie-cselko-frontier-reflectionsI can see now that it’s not about the fighting. It’s about the courage. They didn’t move into Ireland to fight. They didn’t sail to America to fight.

Labels like “The Fighting Scots-Irish” emphasize a certain kind of courage at the expense of other kinds. Like the courage to cross a border, even a sea, to better their lives. Like the courage to walk into the wilderness and carve out a place to call their own. That doesn’t take aggression. They didn’t move forward by way of slaughter or hacking down forests. They moved forward by facing the unknown with a powerful strength of character and purpose. To carve a place in the wilderness and make it their own, after being chased around and out of for a couple centuries. “Leave us be!” could have been their moniker.

Leave us be! To live our lives in peace and community, we’ve crossed the Irish Sea, and then the Atlantic Ocean. We were lured by King James, who planted us as Presbyterian seeds in Ireland, and then by American colonists who sent us to the hinterlands and planted us a buffer between them and the Natives. Conflict precedes us, it does not follow us. You think us fighters, but we are not. Leave us in peace and we stay in peace!

john-faed-evangeline-and-gabrielNow here we are further cementing the fate of these people by popularizing the fighting image, lauding them as heroes for sending their boys to fight our shared wars. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be proud of them, because we should. But we shouldn’t make it seem expected of them because they’ve got fighting in their blood and that’s always been their role.

I’m embracing the one quarter of my blood that is Scots-Irish. These are most assuredly people of strength and courage, and I like that. Of course, there’s also the music, but that’s another story for another time.

May the best ye’ve ever seen
Be the warst ye’ll ever see.
May the moose ne’er lea’ yer aumrie
Wi’ a tear-drap in his e’e.
May ye aye keep hail an’ hertie
Till ye’re auld eneuch tae dee.
May ye aye be jist as happy
As we wiss ye noo tae be.

 

Superstition Day: Pretty Is As Pretty Does

My mother is 93 and still of good mind. She grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, but plenty of her ancestors were from up in the “hollers.” I like to visit her just before she goes to sleep at night. She snuggles in under the covers, and I curl up next to her. My dog, Pixie, then jumps up on the bed and noses in between us to fall asleep. Then Mom and I talk about things that interest her. Anything but world affairs, anyway; she’s horrified by what she sees on the news. Like most of us, she dislikes war and strife, but she sometimes worries herself sick about “what’s happening to the world.” I don’t want to send her off to sleep with those thoughts, so I save that conversation for mornings.

She likes to talk about girlish things sometimes. Like the little black slippers her father bought her, or the teacher she had all through grammar school. We like to giggle too, over stories of old boyfriends or funny things that happened in school.

And now and then she’ll remember some old superstition she heard as a child. One little boy at her school looked up in sky one morning when there was a sprinkling of rain, saw that the sun was shining through the clouds and, eyes wide, proclaimed, “It’s rainin’ and the sun is shinin,’ someone’s gonna die ‘afore the sun goes down.” She’s told me that one many times, putting on her best Blue Ridge mountain accent, and it always makes her smile. (Me too.)

The other evening she remembered one I hadn’t heard before:

“Wash your face at the dawn of day
in the field on the first nine days of May
and your freckles will go away.”

She said her sister made her go along to perform this ritual as as a young teen. “But it didn’t work,” she said, “I told her it wouldn’t.”

I like those old superstitions, and I know lots of readers like them too. So now and then I’ll collect a few and send them your way.

In honor of my mother’s delight at talking about girly things, here are some girly superstitions:

If your cornbread is rough, your husband’s face will be rough.

To brush your hair after dark will bring sorrow.

If a butterfly lands on you, you will get a new sweetheart.

To make yourself think clearly, put a ring or bracelet on your head.

If you eat burnt bread, your hair will become curly.

If a part of the hem of your skirt is turned up, and you spit on it, you will have a joyful day.

There’s often a shred of logic in superstitions: If you wet a crease you can then “iron” it with your hand over a flat surface. If you want to focus your attention (think clearly), any little trick that you believe will work, will probably help some. And if your cornbread is rough, you certainly won’t get the most handsome cornbread-lovin’ man in the village.

I love superstitions. They’re amusing, perplexing, and often dark and frightening. Their origins are so far from our lives today that we can hardly imagine how they came to be. I know there’s a lot of behavior shaping (“If your cornbread is rough….”) There’s also a lot of fear of the unknown, and a lot of blind hope from people who may otherwise have very little reason for hope.

It’s common to think that belief in superstition if a consequence of ignorance. While that is no doubt true in some cases, I don’t think it’s primarily ignorance that makes people believe in superstition. I believe it’s powerlessness. If you have no money, no education, no suitors, you can at least have hope, and superstitions give concreteness of a sort to hope.

I have loads of superstitions collected in a folder in the back of my file cabinet. I’ve written them down as I’ve heard them, from books, movies, people in different parts of the country, and my mother. I want to share them with you, and so every now and then I’ll do a Superstition Day.

If you have any superstitions you’d like me to add to my lists on Superstition Days, please send them along to me.

May your cornbread always be smooth!

America: Conceived on a Beer Bender?

It’s time for a break from our John Fitch series. File this under strange facts….

The Mayflower wasn’t heading for Plymouth Rock back in 1620. It was heading for Jamestown, Virginia.

MayflowerIt might never have landed at Plymouth at all if they hadn’t been running short on beer.

With a dozen more barrels of beer on board, the thirsty pilgrims could have made it down to Jamestown, where breweries were in full brew mode and the colonial party was in full swing.

As it was, the Mayflower’s daily ration of a gallon of beer per man, woman, and child seriously dented the ship’s supply, and Captain Jones was worried he’d have a dry and dangerous voyage home with his crew.

Thus the pilgrims suffered the indignity not just of landing far from bullseye, but of being unceremoniously dropped off on amary chilton- married john winslowby henry bacon rock with no beer at all too.

I don’t know if the Mayflower was 620 miles off course because they’d been wantonly indulging on more than their fair share of beer.

But that gallon a day ration could account for why they sidled up to a rock at Plymouth that morning, instead of coming ashore a safe distance from objects that could put holes in wooden hulls. But I’m just guessing now.

Captain Jones fairly pushed the Pilgrims off board, roughly enough so WillWilliam Bradfordiam Bradford complained that they were hastened ashore and made to drink water, that the seamen might have the more beer.”

Bradford sounds a bit snippy to me, and I can see why he and his fellow shipmate, my capitalist seventh great-grandfather Isaac Allerton, didn’t remain friends. Allerton gets the sticky end of the wicket in history books, just short of being called a capitalist pig, but I say that’s because he didn’t commit every personal slight of Bradford’s to paper and posterity, as ole’ bossy breeches Bradford did.

But that’s a different story, for a different time. Right now we’re talking beer. It’s America’s Beverage, and it was right from the get-go.

Plenty of words have been traded on whether or not dry beer barrels really and truly led to the Mayflower pulling over at Plymouth and throwing our Pilgrim ancestors to the curb.

But let me ask yEdward_Percy_Moran_-_The_Pilgrims_Landing_ou, is there a different way to interpret Bradford’s quote?

Or this one, that, “we could not now take time for further search, our victuals being pretty much spent, especially our beer.”

Putting the controversy to bed right now, I’ll say this:

The best that the naysayers can naysay is that the Pilgrims were not pushed to set up shop at Plymouth only because the ship was low on beer.

That’s good enough for me, and I won’t say anything more about it. Except that there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Colonial America was consumed by beer.

Such as:

  • The Roanoke colonists of 628px-Henry_Singleton_The_Ale-House_Door_c._1790Virginia wasted no time building a brewery, and less than two years after pounding the settlement’s first stake, they were passing around the corn ale. The only problem was that it tasted horrible, so they advertised in London for a real brewmeister who could make tolerably good beer.
  • About the same time, the Dutch settled an island the Natives called Manhattan, changing its name to New Amsterdam. They too set about right away to build a brewery. Things went so rollickingly well there that in 1614 the first baby of New Amsterdam’s was born at the brewery.
  • And it could only get better. By 1660 New Amsterdam had a population of around 3,000, and 26 breweries and taverns. That’s a pretty significant per capita presence, at 115 population per imbibery. You can see a very cool interactive digital map of New Amsterdam, including the locations of all 20 of its taverns, at http://www.ekamper.net/gr-misc.htm.Ordinary Life in New Amsterdam - Jan Steen
  • Jan Steen, a Dutch artist, lived in New Amsterdam. That is his painting at right, titled, “Ordinary Life in New Amsterdam.” Need I say more?
  • We don’t have the supply logs for the Mayflower, but we do have them for the Arabella, the ship that brought Governor Winthrop to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. For its trip over, the Arabella carried 42 tons of beer and 14 tons of water. Four times as much beer as water. That’s a mighty bit of imbibing.

But before you jump to the conclusion that our fair nation was conceived on a bender, it’s prudent to understand the state of water in England.cholera

Simply put, it was wretched. It tasted of every rotten scrap and unmentionable that was thrown or poured into the nation-island’s waterways.

And worse, it harbored every disease that could be borne by those lethal liquids.

England in the 17th and 18th centuries was a petri dish of plague, influenza, typhus, cholera, malaria, smallpox, syphilis, diphtheria, hepatitis, dysentery, and who knows what else.

Other than boiling water to purify it, which is inconvenient on, say, a wooden ship or a day hike, purification by alcoholification was the 18th century’s only common alternative.

To quench thirst, beer or strong cide1843 - Carser was consumed at every meal, and even given to babies.

Colonial workers were known to strike for beer and wine too.

Workmen demanded a quotient of liquor every day on top of their wages, or they refused to work. Such daily rations were especially the thing of New Amsterdam.

A Dutch visitor to Connecticut in 1639 wrote that, “These English live soberly, drinking but three times at a meal, and when a man drinks to drunkenness, they tie him to a post and whip him as they do thieves in Holland.”the-captain

During the Revolutionary War both the British soldiers and our Continental Army were guaranteed a healthy daily ration of beer, which makes it a wonder anyone knew whose side they were on or what they were fighting over.

Even the war’s major strategies were calculated over a pint or four.

Thankfully, their British counterparts were just as likely to do the same.

But since beer-making grains were in short supply during the war, soldiers were probably not getting a daily ration of beer.

It was more likely a daily ration of some inebriating liquid of somewhere around a six percent alcohol content. That would generally mean spruce beer or hard cider. Even sassafras and pumpkin were used in a pinch.lord-howe-and-american-commissioners-benjamin-franklin-john-adams-and-edward-rutledge

It was probably only the officers and politicians who could get their mugs filled with real barley-hops beer.

George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Sam Adams in particular were well known for their love of spirits and beer.

My seventh great-grandfather, Isaac Allerton the Mayflower passenger, didn’t live to see the American colonies freed from British rule. But he did build a reasonable fortune with his small fleet of ships, trading goods between  England and its colonies in America and the Caribbean. Including beer, of course.

Perhaps we’re not the only nation whose very founding was fueled by beer. But I kind of think we might be. Because as it turns out, beer is as American as…beer.

Here’s to you!

Should I Display This Photo?

A few days ago I wrote about all the strange emotions I felt when I saw the first photo of my mother as a child. I showed the picture before, but I’ll show it here again.

Ruthy MericaAfter editing the photo to remove some of the shadow and enlarging the portion where my mother is visible I was overwhelmed with feeling. I felt the thrill of discovery because after resigning myself years ago to never seeing an image of her as anything younger than 22 or 23, I found her in the shadows of a photo of my Aunt Ola I’ve had all along. I felt joy that I finally knew what she looked like. Disappointment that she was veiled in shadow and I could barely make out her features. Confirmation that she was the same brunette beauty I’d seen in later photos of her. Delight that she looked like a happy, spunky little girl. And a twinge of shame at seeing her in a smudged and ill-fitting dress. I tried hard to fight off that feeling, but there it was. It overtook me before my rational side could jump in and block it. So I can toss in the feeling of disappointment at myself for that rush to judgement.

The shame went against everything I thought I knew about myself, that I observe objectively and do not judge irrationally or without considering varied facts. (I infuriate friends for refusing to take sides.) But the dirty dress went against everything I thought I knew about my mother’s family. Would I have to rethink it all?

I’ve always heard about the clockwork routine they lived to. The chores her parents expected the kids to do every morning. The hearty and complete meals that were laid out three times a day for this farm family of 12. Wash day was every Monday and ironing every Tuesday. Her mother did all that, but each Saturday the whole family pitched in around the farm. My mother’s job was to clean the upstairs. Every Saturday she scrubbed the floors, washed the basins and windows, dusted, and tidied up. Her little sister had the job of cleaning the downstairs, but since she was three years younger her mother helped her.  Then Sundays were for church and a big supper, the table laden with roast chicken, macaroni and cheese, green beans or peas, rolls, and if they were lucky, a berry pie or coconut cake.

Such disciplined routine typically means a clean and orderly household. The oldest child, my Aunt Ola, 13 years my mother’s elder, was fastidious to the point of obsession. No dirt dared enter her spotless house. And no grime dared step foot on her property. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she washed the tire treads of her car after every trip to the store. Yet there was my mother in a photo of Ola and her tidy baby boy, with my mother looking like Pigpen from the Charley Brown cartoons. Of course, it’s easy for me to justify the way she looks in the photo. Maybe it’s Saturday and she just finished washing the floors. Maybe it’s a warm spring day and she’s been hoeing rows with her mother in the garden. Or a hot summer day and she’s been playing hide and seek with her Comer cousins down at the bend. Or she’s just back from the swimming hole. The kids swam clothes and all, and this would be a perfect swim dress.

It’s easy to justify a kid being dirty. But they’re not usually photographed that way. If we know a photographer will be present we dress our children to reflect well on ourselves. And if a photo turns out less than flattering we tear it up. It’s a small manipulation of reality that helps us shape the image we want to show to the world.  We take photos. We look at them and sort them, throwing out the bad ones, keeping the good ones, and choosing the great ones to display in frames. Or these days, as our home screens or screen savers. That is acceptable and normal behavior. All good, right?

Yet here I am with the only photo of my mother being one I bet her mother would not have wanted to last 84 years, as it has so far. As the only photo I have of her, I love it. And that pretty face and hair I recognize? I adore it. Pulling wider to show her leaning into the photo from over the porch rail? It makes me smile to see this joyous, impish girl who so wants to charm the camera. Even the composition of the photo is great, all angles and squares with the porch posts, house siding, chair back spindles, window frame, and my mother’s checked dress. Quite artistic. These things make me happy. Then I zero in on the dress and suddenly my emotions become very mixed. I don’t like the sour shame that creeps into my warm soup of emotions. Again, it’s easy to justify a dirty kid. But photos worthy of display can’t come with attached captions that explain the circumstances.

I sent the photo to a photo restorer and got back an improved version where some of the shadows were removed from my mother’s face and dress. It was now slightly improved, but still nothing I considered mantle-worthy. Here’s the cleaned-up version:

Ruthy_Merica_c.1930Her mother, my grandmother, would not want to display the photo. Aunt Ola wouldn’t either. And my mother would certainly have thrown it away. But it’s the only one I have.

Should I display the photo?