Category Archives: American Colonial History

The Slavery Blind Spot

I love studying history and learning things they never taught in history class.

In my U.S. history studies, I discovered James Otis Jr. and his writings early in the growing dispute between Great Britain and her American colonies. In his The Rights of British of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved in 1764, he wrote this.

That the colonists, black and white, born here, are free born British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the principles of the common law, and acts of parliament; but from the British constitution, which was reestablished at the revolution [of 1688], with a professed design to lecture the liberties of all the subjects to all generations.

Well, so far so good. Rights are for both blacks and whites. Otis was far, far ahead of most leaders in the colonies in being against slavery,  in believing whites and blacks had the same rights. I’m not 100 percent sure he meant this for all blacks as opposed to free blacks, but he definitely was against slavery.

But Otis also exhibited what I call a colonial blind spot concerning slavery, for he also wrote this:

We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the choice of independency be offered the colonies, or subjection to Great Britain upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the latter.

Per Otis, Great Britain could do almost anything to the colonies in the way of short of “absolute slavery” and the colonies would stay with Britain. But he falls into the trap of equating lack of representation in Parliament with slavery. Here’s how I explained it in Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution:

But I think Otis, to some extent, falls into a trap so many of the Founders did when he wrote that the colonists would be willing to accept more British control “upon any terms above absolute slavery.” I find this echoed in the writings of many of the Founders. Taxation without representation equals slavery is a common theme. They go on to say, We won’t be slaves, and a revolution resulted. They are essentially saying, Slavery is a bad thing. Yet many saying that owned slaves and treated them like a commodity, to be used up until they died then buy some more.

If you carry the logic out, were they not saying, Slavery is acceptable for Africans but not for Europeans. Or, Slavery is acceptable for people with black skin but not for those with white? Why was it not acceptable for whites? Because it was evil. So they were really admitting, We will treat black-skinned people in an evil manner, but we will not let others treat us white people that way. Yes, it was racism.

Fortunately, we have come a long way since then. We don’t think that government oppression, however we might define that, is slavery. No, slavery—especially the race-based slavery of the 1700s—was something much, much worse. Those that hated what Parliament was doing and said it made them slaves, didn’t understand what slavery really was.

So the way the leaders in America brought forth the arguments that led to the American Revolution were blind as far as slavery went. Surprise, surprise.

Shall Be Deemed An Enemy

I love studying history and learning things they never taught in history class.

My study for writing Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution resulted in me learning an awful lot about that time. We tend to look back at the American Revolution as a glorious event in our history, and the Founding Fathers as great men, who broke with an over-bearing Great Britain and forged a new nation. But was that the truth?

One document I looked at was the Resolves of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765. Written by Patrick Henry, it gave the Virginia response to the Stamp Act. The resolves covered the typical colonial complaints about taxes without representation. Then the last resolve reads:

Resolved, that any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons other than the General Assembly of this Colony have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to His Majesty’s Colony.

Then, after other things Great Britain did didn’t sit well, the New York Sons of Liberty made several resolutions in 1773, the last of which was:

Resolved, That whoever shall sell, or buy, or in any manner contribute to the sale, or purchase of tea…shall be deemed an enemy of the liberties of America.

Really? You disagree with someone’s opinion as to how government shall work and they designate you an enemy? That seems rather extreme, to dismiss someone simply because they hold a different opinion than you. Who knew that, in the 1760 and 1770s in Colonial America they cast you out as an enemy if you analyzed an issue and came to a different conclusion. Kind of like cancel culture, no?

That kind of thought process, coming from two different colonies about two different issues nine years apart shows that this wasn’t a rare thing. It may, in fact, have been a dominant opinion at the time.

It was documents such as these that hit me hard as I researched and wrote the book. Not everything the colonists did was nice. Not everything was right. They have some things to answer for in history. Not that I think the outcome was all that bad, but I’ve come to question some of their methods.

But I need to file this in the “More Research Needed” category.

Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution

Book 4 in the “Documenting America series—or Book 5 if you include the homeschool edition of the first one.

Saturday morning I awoke around 3:45 a.m. with a need which, unfortunately, happens about every night. When I went back to bed, I could not fall asleep. I laid there until about 4:30 a.m., then decided to just get up and start my day. I went down to The Dungeon to work on the computer.

I decided the best thing to do was the publishing tasks of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. The e-book I had published March 1st, but there are more steps to the print book than the e-book, so I didn’t jump right into print book tasks.

But a very quiet Saturday morning, long before daylight, seemed a good time to concentrate on that. I first took 20 minutes or so to wrap up my stock trading accounting for the week, then plunged into my Word print book file. It all went pretty easy. It helped that I had just done this for another book and thus it was fresh on my mind. I made one or two minor errors in entering headers but they were easily fixed. By 8:45 I had the book interior finished.

After breakfast, I went back to tackle the cover. Any regular reader of this blog knows I had making covers, though I haven’t posted about that for a while. This cover was easy, however. Calculate the book size based on the number of pages. Upload the e-book cover, resize it to the print book size. Add a text box to the back cover with the already-written text. Add a text box for the spine, rotate it 90°, center it two ways on the background. Export as a PDF file. Upload to Amazon.

It really as that simple. I had a little trouble aligning layers relative to the background, and accidentally moved the background a little. I thought no big deal. I clicked “publish” on the print book, and went on to another task, writing a letter to my granddaughter. Amazon needs a little time to review the files before they are published.

Yesterday, during Sunday school, an e-mail from Amazon came in. The book was not acceptable. The only problem was with the cover, something about the back of the book not being acceptable. I knew right what is was: that accidentally moved background. In the afternoon, after a good Sunday school class, worship service, Subway lunch, and pleasurable reading time in the sunroom, I went back to The Dungeon to make adjustments.

Except I found the adjustments too difficult and decided to start over. It was much easier the second time. All layers were properly created again and aligned. It took less than 30 minutes to create, check, export the PDF, and upload to Amazon.

Using the online book viewer, I checked the cover. Something appeared that I hadn’t noticed. Some of the back cover text overlapped onto the spine. That took two minutes to fix, and soon I had to book re-uploaded. This time all items on the cover were in the right place and within the guidelines. I clicked “approve” then “publish”. And now I wait.

Here’s the link. Hopefully both the print book and e-book will be available by the time you read this. Hopefully too, this is something some of you will want to read.

January Progress, February Goals

UPDATE: Everything below I wrote last Friday, in anticipation of where I would be at the end of the month. I didn’t know I was going to have a stroke on Saturday. More on that in a future post.

I didn’t really set goals for January. It took me so long to think through what my goals for all of 2024 would be that it was well into the month before I could even think about monthly goals. So I’ll state some goals as if I had made them, or pull them from my annual goals.

  • Attend two writers group meetings. One meeting was cancelled due to weather. I attended the other.
  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I accomplished this, with a meaningful blog on all days.
  • Get to work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 8I started this on Jan. 22, a little earlier than expected. As of the end of the month, I’m more than 50 percent done with it. So far the writing has flowed easily. UPDATE: I’m not 50 % donel
  • Finish editing and publish A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 1. I finished the editing around Jan. 10th and got to work on formatting for publication. Bogged down a little on the cover, as I had to first create a template for the whole series. The e-book template was done on Jan. 26. 
  • Begin reading in a source for the next Documenting America book. I did only a little of this. I enjoyed what I was reading—about debates in the Boston newspapers in 1774-75. But I wasn’t sure, from the little I read, that this was the right subject for the next volume.
  • Finalize and publish the latest short story in the Danny Tompkins series. Nothing done on this.
  • Begin transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I’m hoping to start this in February. I started this in January, around the 15th. I’m not sure why; it just seemed right. As of now, I have completed all the letters for 1981 (a partial year), and made a small start on 1982. Lots more to go. UPDATE: I still have 6 or 7 letters to go.

So, all in all a good month. What about February? Here’s what it looks like to me.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend two writers meetings.
  • Make major progress on Volume 8 of A Walk Through Holy Week. Based on January progress, I might be able to complete the first draft in February. UPDATE: Probably only 60 percent.
  • Finish all publishing tasks for Vol. 1 of AWTHW, both e-book and print version.
  • Make a couple of new ads on Amazon. Maybe one for There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel and one for A Walk Through Holy Week, Volume 1.
  • Continue transcribing our letters from Saudi Arabia.
  • Continue reading in some source for the next Documenting America book.

And that will do it. My typing is impaired by the stroke. Still not ready to pound the keys at a rapid pace.

2023 Recap

It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.

2023 was a strange year for writing. In some ways my output doesn’t seem very significant. But, then, the year brought many other things that pried me away from writing. We made six trips for family matters, Lynda had her heart irregularities leading to a pacemaker implant, home improvements led to the discovery of water damage that is taking much time to arrange for contractors to begin repairs.

Yet, I think I made some progress. Let’s see how it stacks up against the goals I published on January 6, 2023.

  • Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I got this done. Publication was in June.
  • Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books. I completed this, sometime in late spring. I settled on eight volumes rather than six or seven. All volumes are planned out and all chapters named.
  • Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW. Finished this, and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHWFinished this (didn’t actually have much left to do on it), and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
  • Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it. I’m pleased to say I finished this. It actually became Part 7 in the restructured series. It was done a couple of weeks before the last class.
  • Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course. Not only did I start it, but I finished it and made one editing pass through it. Two more passes and it will be ready to publish.
  • Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study. I decided to hold off publishing volumes out of sequence, so all the complete volumes are waiting for Volumes 1, 2, and 3 to be published.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. All 32 episodes have been published.

    Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To RevolutionYes, I finished this. I decided to publish it to Kindle Vella, chapter by chapter. In hindsight that was not a good decision, as it has not attracted a readership.

  • One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to do, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done. No, I didn’t do this. The work of disaccumulation proved to be more time-consuming than expected. I made major progress on it, but I’m still a long way from done.

So all in all, I published only two items: one book, one book in serial format. Given the distractions, maybe that’s not too bad. And I did get a lot of writing done, even though it’s not yet published.

Time now to set some goals for 2024. That will be in my next post.

September Progress, October Goals

End of the month. Time to report what progress I made relative to the goals I set at the beginning of the month, and to set some goals for next month.

  • Blog twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. I suspect my readers are tired of seeing that goal each month. Did this. Only one day was a late and weak post, but I went back later in the day and fleshed it out.
  • Attend three writers meetings, plus the online social gathering. Did this. The meetings were good, though the online social gathering was poorly attended.
  • So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. But I will stay the course and publish all 32 episodes there, the bring it out as a book at the appropriate time.

    Complete the first draft of Documenting America: Run-Up To RevolutionDid this, finishing it on September 22, eight days ahead of schedule. It felt good to have stuck with this, rarely missing a planned day of writing.

  • Decide on whether to post my new Documenting America book to Kindle Vella and, if I do, get the first chapter/episode published on Wednesday, September 6. I decided to do this, and put up the first chapter/episode on September 11 and to publish them on Mondays and Thursdays. That schedule puts the last one available for reading on December 28.
  • Tie down the new writing idea that came to me on August 28-30. Write all I can about the idea in manuscript. I did some of this. Actually, I blogged about the idea here. The book, should that’s what it winds up being, will be fairly complex. It will take a lot of research and planning. I’m not ready to commit to that yet, but I do want to get more of my ideas documented, just in case I ever do want to write it. So I call this goal only half completed.

Okay, not a bad month. Time now for setting some goals for October.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend three writers group meetings.
  • Attend the Ozark Writers League fall conference in Branson. This will be at the end of the month.
  • Finish all editing on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, and schedule all episodes for publishing on Kindle Vella.
  • Begin work on A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. I have this pretty well planned out. My main problem will be in shifting mindset from history to Bible study, so I’m not setting a word goal. I will probably do so next month.
  • Continue to document the writing idea, The Artwork Of God. I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend on this. I think it will basically be putting somewhat random ideas in a document.
  • Begin reading a book on colonial America, dealing with essays from a newspaper debate in Boston in 1774-1775. I just found this book and saved it to Kindle. What I’m going to do with it I’m not sure.

That’s plenty. I’ll come back in a month and give a report and set new goals.

Life Is Busy Right Now…

Verly close to finishing the book. Individual chapters going up on Vella each week.

…so busy that I didn’t prepare a blog post for today. Yesterday I worked hot and heavy on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, completing two chapters and doing a little restructuring. I had a number of phone calls and messages to make regarding work to be done at the house and upcoming travel.

Consequently, I didn’t prepare a blog post ahead of time. And you get this filler post. I may come back and say a little more later. Right now I’m preparing for a City inspection of some work and our quarterly pest control treatment. Also need to call about a car in the shop, accommodations for our next trip, and something else that’s escaping me right now. Oh, yes, find out what’s the hold up on getting an estimate on some work we want done.

Possibly I’ll get back later to add something to this.

ETA, 3:01 PM Friday 22 September 2023

Well, today I finished DA:RUTR. I wrote the last two chapters this morning. I also edited Chapter 17, putting me more than halfway through the editing process. In addition, ten episodes are uploaded to Kindle Vella and scheduled to be published on Mondays and Fridays. I think that, by this time next week, all episodes will be edited and scheduled to be published.

It’s always a good feeling when you say “I’m done” with the first draft of a book. Better even when it is fully edited, and then when it’s published. At least the first part is done.

Now to figure out what to write next. Most likely I’ll move on the A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1.

Research As A Motivator

A period of intense research is what led to this book. What will come of this new time of research?

Somewhere, in the back pages of this blog, I’ve said that I love research. I find that it motivates me. But research, I have also found, has a dark side—at least for me it does—in that it can all too easily become all consuming.

Two research opportunities came up recently, and I am trying very hard to resist the urge to dive in fully.

One has to do with genealogy. This month, one of my few book sales is of my genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. That’s the second of these books sold since I published it in July 2020. Then, a day or so after that sale, I was browsing through my Google Books library, looking for a new download, and saw a copy of a two-years volume of The Essex Antiquarian, a genealogy and history magazine. The volume I downloaded and started reading years ago was from 1898. Of course I had to open it.

But rather than read on, I decided to search the book for “Cheney”, my wife’s maiden name. The family was in Essex County, Massachusetts for a while, some in Ipswich, including Stephen and Elizabeth Cross. I found several hits for Cheney, four of which were for John Cheney of Newbury, the immigrant ancestor of the family.

I’ve done a lot of research on John Cheney, and possibly he and his wife Martha will be the subjects of my next genealogy book. That book, however, is so far down the line that I don’t have dates for writing it. But, I had this opportunity: four items related to him published in a 1898 magazine were at my fingertips on my screen. I pulled up my John Cheney research document, and learned that two of those hits were new information. I dutifully made the new entries and did comprehensive source documentation. Beautiful. A pleasant 30 minutes spent.

That wasn’t good enough. I searched for other editions of that magazine, and found several more, available for full viewing. I did the Cheney search over several volumes, and found additional information about John Cheney that was new. Repeated the entries and documentation. A pleasant 2 hours spent.

The next day I repeated and expanded this, looking for information, not only for Cheney, but for other family names, including Cross.  I also found a longer article about a Newbury man that John Cheney supported in a controversy with the government. Rather than take time to read that (six pages), I made a note of where to find it again. Two more hours spent.

Within a year, these will be going to the University of Rhode Island library. While it will be sad to see them go, it will also be a joy knowing they will be well cared for and properly preserved and available for study.

The other research opportunity came with the many copies of the Stars and Stripes newspaper that I have. As noted in previous posts, these were newspapers that Dad worked on in Africa and Europe during WW2, copies of which he sent home to his parents, to be stored in an old steamer trunk to this day. As I reported earlier, I’m donating them to the University of Rhode Island. I decided to inventory them first, and began that process on Labor Day.

With every Bill Mauldin cartoon I see, I wonder if Dad modeled for that one.

Tuesday, I continued. My inventory method consists of recording the day, date, and edition—also whether the copy has any damage or not. By the end of my dedicated time on Tuesday, I had a total of 70 listed. Only 700 to go. I’m purposely not taking time to look at the newspapers. I will make a couple of exceptions to that as I get further into this.

But, on Tuesday, I saw a headline, “U.S. Woman Writer Held by Russia as Spy”. That sounded interesting, and I read the article. The writer was Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970). She was an American who became a socialist, then found sympathy with the Soviet Union and Communist China. Much of her writing was promoting the economic systems in those two countries. Why the Russians kicked her out is a mystery, but it seems some think it was her cozy relationship with China that was the problem.

Much of that I learned from the article about her at Wikipedia, not in the newspaper.

Anna Strong is a new person to me. I’ve never heard of her before. Thirty minutes of reading gave me the gist of what her views were, views very different from mine. A few quotes of hers made me think of things that need to be said about the capitalist and communist systems. I could easily write something about that, given a little more research.

When I first got Dad’s Stars and Stripes, in 1997, I had dreams of doing war research in them, thinking about the fog of war. How much of what the newspaper reported would prove to be true or untrue? How much does journalism get wrong, requiring history to set the record straight? Alas, after 25 years, the newspapers remained untouched. My research project null and void. I suppose I could pick it up again, but I can see that would require years of research and then some writing. No, I just can’t dedicate that time to that project. So off the papers go to URI. Perhaps students, faculty, or outside researchers will someday use them to good purposes.

More research? No! In the last three days I’ve spent over five hours on research and almost none on writing. That can’t be. I’ve got to find a way to pull away from it and concentrate on the tasks at hand. I have three books in the pipeline, started and unfinished. I need to choose one and get it done.

So Many Choices, So Little Time

I’m a little late with my post this Monday morning. The weekend was busy and I didn’t get it written ahead of time. Then, this morning Lynda had to go for a Covid19 test ahead of a procedure on Wednesday. Her appointment was at 7:50 and we were to be there fifteen minutes early. It was a drive-by testing site, and the long line of cars moved quickly through.  A stop for gas and pastries on the way home, and here I am, finally writing this.

Over the weekend and late last week my thoughts began to gel about my next writing tasks. It was Friday (I think; maybe Saturday) that I documented a couple of book ideas and wrote them in a Word document and saved them to my “Ideas” folder. They’ve been bugging me and, while I’m now purposely suppressing writing ideas as come, these two pre-date my decision to suppress, so I wanted to be done with them to free up brain space for other things.

What to do next? I have a novel-in-progress that’s stalled. I have a book I’m updating. I have a short story that’s bugging me. I have the next book in the Documenting America series to begin. And that’s not everything. I needed to prioritize.

So I took a little time to brainstorm that and decide what to do next, and why. Here’s what I decided.

  1. Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors. So, I began the editing work in early September 2020, and hope to re-publish by the end of September.

    Republish Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents. I had already done most of the editing. An hour and it would be ready for publishing tasks. My reason for putting this first is I want to run some Amazon ads on it, beginning in about two weeks when I participate in the next Amazon ads challenge. I want an updated book to advertise.

  2. Edited to add: I forgot, when I posted this earlier, that I have to make a few corrections to my second genealogy book, Stephen Cross and Elizabeth Cheney of Ipswich. A few of the figures were of poor quality. I need to load them into G.I.M.P and improve the quality, put them in the book file, then upload the revised file. As much as I hate doing graphic arts with G.I.M.P. I’ve been putting this off. I think, however, that I’ll slip this in after I finish re-publishing Documenting America.
  3. Return to work on The Teachings, the volume 3 in my church history novel series, which will plug the gap between volume 2 and 4. I’m about 1/3 done with it, and need to get back.
  4. Write, or at least start, the next story in the Danny Tompkins series of short stories. I had once thought the series finished, but an idea for one more story just won’t leave me, so I need to write it to get it out of my head. My problem is I know the main idea I want to convey, but not the full story. So when I start on it I’ll perhaps stall almost right away. I won’t know till I start the writing.
  5. The transcription is now complete (28 Sep 2020). Time to add some commentary.

    Add commentary to the Kuwait letters book. I’ve written about this before. After finishing the transcription, and before I put the letters back to storage and relegated the file to its folder and out of my mind, I added a little commentary. I’m ready to open the file and add some more commentary. I don’t know that I want to take the time to finish it, but I want to add something to it. This may be something for the odd hours between other things.

  6. Begin reading for the next book in the Documenting America series. This is tentatively Run-up to Revolution, covering the period from 1761 to 1775 or 1776. It will be the realization that the Colonies were no longer aligned with Great Britain and a separation was inevitable. I’m not sure how I will research this. Everything I need, just about, is on-line, but how to access it and when to read it is unknown at this time.

I had a couple of other things I wanted to put on this list, but will wait. As I sit and write this nothing else is coming to mind. If it does before the end of the day, I’ll edit this.

Now, if I can accomplish half of this by, say, the end of 2020, I’ll feel like I’ve made progress.

Land Ownership: A Defining American Characteristic

My research into US history and genealogy has convinced me that widespread ownership of land was a uniquely American phenomenon. I have more research to do, especially into European land ownership, but what I’ve been able to glean from American documents has been instructive.

In Documenting America: Lessons From The United States’ Historical Documents, I cover a curious 1792 writing of James Madison. Then in the US House of Representatives, Madison wrote about an unfortunate situation in Great Britain, then, concerning his fellow Americans, wrote:

“What a contrast is here to the independent situation and manly sentiments of American citizens, who live on their own soil, or whose labor is necessary to its cultivation….”

Madison realized that Americans tended to own their own land. Since that contrasts with the situation in Britain, I conclude most Britains didn’t own their own land. It seems to me, from history readings years ago still clinging to a few gray cells, that the feudal system was long gone in England by the time Madison wrote this, but clearly elements of that system remained. Land was owned by English nobility—princes, dukes, earls, and whatever other titles there were—had huge holdings of land and leased it to the poor peons who worked it for the lord, dividing the proceeds with him.

Land ownership in America wasn’t universal, but it was widespread. As I study my wife’s genealogy on her father’s side, which stretches back to the earliest days of Massachusetts Bay Colony, I read a lot of wills and inventory of estates. Most of them include land. Upland lots, marsh lots, lots on “The Way”, town lots, farms. Defined by maple trees, stone walls, and nascent rights-of-way, almost every estate, be it modest or great, had land in it.

That’s not to say that everyone had an equal amount of land. In Ipswich, Massachusetts, many people received a 2-acre lot in town, but some lots were better than others. One man would sell “the eastern 15 feet of my said lot to….” Another man carved a small house lot out of his 2 acres for his wife’s sister and husband. Land was subdivided and sold at a brisk pace. But it was people’s to sell. In England, none of these people would have had land.

I realize, of course, that much of this land was stolen from the native peoples. Or they were enticed with alcohol and sold their land for a fraction of its worth. This is a shameful chapter in our history. Wealth was stolen or coerced away from the rightful owners.

My research into three Ipswich families in the mid to late 1600s led me to the issue of Mason’s claim. It seems that John Mason had been granted title to a large tract of land in what is now Northern Massachusetts. The towns of Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, and others were settled on these lands beginning in 1633. Land was apportioned to the settlers, who built houses, established farms and trades, and lived a rugged existence. Civil war in England, the Cromwell years and then the restoration, made enforcing Mason’s claims difficult. He died without ever seeing “his land”.

But come the 1670s and Mason’s grandson said, “Hey, that’s my land!” Court battles took place, one court ruling in favor of Mason’s claim, another overruling that. It must have been quite the legal doneybrook.

But, in the town records, in extant pamphlets and broadsides, you see the fear of the people. Their land might not be theirs after all. Some feudal lord who was the king’s friend had a title to it. People were scared. In England, Scotland, and Wales they could never dream of owning land. Here in the New World they had 20 upland acres and a town lot, plus some marshland that was really arable. And some grandson of some wealthy person is going to take it from them? Fortunately for the colonists, the grandson eventually gave up.

As New England and other Atlantic seaboard places filled up, the march west began. At times seeking gold, most settlers were after land. Somewhere beyond the mountains was land for the taking, and they would go get it. Once again, England, France, Germany, Spain, and other European nations had no equivalent.

Even today, the quest for land goes on. It’s not quite the same as it once was. A hefty bank account is also a sign of wealth, and you can have that while renting. But home-ownership remains a strong American goal. Americans want land, at least a lot of us do.

But times have changed, and with the size of our population we no longer have as high a percentage land ownership as we did in the colonial years and soon after. Not being a landowner changes one’s perspective.

So far I’ve covered two unique aspects of the USA that I consider worth studying: self-determination and land ownership. Stay tuned for the third, which will be coming in about a week.