Category Archives: History

book reviews, family, Genealogy, History

Book Review: Letters From Muskoka

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The book is available in modern reprints. My copy was a free e-book of the original, out-of-copyright edition.

Some years back, after twenty years of searching, I finally “found” my maternal grandfather. I had a last name and diminutive first name, but no location. A few hints that my grandmother gave, along with DNA triangulation at 23andMe, and in August 2017 I finally confirmed Herbert Stanley “Bert” Foreman as the man, and his birthplace as Port Carling, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

The genealogy research went fast, as did finding cousins. The library at Port Carling was incredibly helpful with making copies of book pages for me. With the location being totally knew to me (now mainly a vacation area north of Toronto), I began to look for and acquire books about the area. The ones I got were available on line through Google Books as they were out of copyright. I downloaded four books, and the first one I read was Letters From Muskoka by “an Emigrant Lady”.

I read this several years ago, probably back in 2018, but, being somewhat less familiar with Google Books than I am now, I didn’t save it to my library there. Also, I find that I’m not as prompt at reviewing books I read as e-books, and hence I never reviewed it. This week, wanting to catch up on book reviews, I went looking for “that Muskoka book I read a few years ago” and didn’t find it. Fortunately, through a simple search I found it. In order to write a review of it, I had to give it a bit of a re-read. Mainly, I scrolled ahead to this haunting passage I remembered from the end of the main narrative:

I went into the Bush of Muskoka strong and healthy, full of life and energy, and fully as enthusiastic as the youngest of our party. I left it with hopes completely crushed, and with health so hopelessly shattered from hard work, unceasing anxiety and trouble of all kinds, that I am now a helpless invalid, entirely confined by the doctor’s orders to my bed and sofa, with not the remotest chance of ever leaving them for a more active life during the remainder of my days on earth.

What a sad commentary on her years there. She, a serviceman’s widow for fifteen years, and her adult children were Brits who were living in France when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. When the war ended in 1870, changes in the country made life there less attractive for these British expats. One daughter and family had emigrated to Muskoka, and most of the rest decided to follow.

When the book was first published in 1878 in England, the author was listed as “An Emigrant Lady”. Later editions identified her as Harriet Barbara (Mrs. Charles) Gerard King. She was a widow with four children, at least two adults. At the end of the war, they decided to emigrate to Canada to take up free land being offered in Muskoka. Harriet was 61 at this time.

They arrived in Muskoka, after a major ocean storm in transit, after train delays, after finding themselves without money, in fall of 1871. The hardships began almost immediately, and did not abate for the next four years. Here are other salient quotes from the book.

It was anguish to see your sisters and sister-in-law, so tenderly and delicately brought up, working harder by far than any of our servants in England or France.

We were rich in nothing but delusive hopes and expectations, doomed, like the glass basked…to be shattered and broken to pieces.

A portrait of Harriet, I suspect after she left Muskoka in 1876, more likely shortly before her death in 1885.

Normally I don’t have much sympathy for or interest in those who are, or think they are, part of the aristocracy. They have their good things in life and don’t need my sympathy. But it’s hard to read this and not have a little sympathy for the emigrant lady. In the last day or two, as I read on in the book, I learned that she was a writer and tried to bring income in by writing and submitting articles. At this, she was mostly unsuccessful.

The letters take up the bulk of the book, with a few ancillary sections. I’m not sure that I read beyond the letters. Mrs. King described in great detail the hardships in getting a farm cut out of the rocky woods. All family members saw their health deteriorate due to the hard work and the meagerness of the provisions.

The book did what I wanted it to do: help me to understand the area my long-lost grandfather came from. As I wrote this review, I can see I need to finish the last few short sections of the book. I’ll download it to my phone and begin reading it in the off moments. Then, when I’m sure I finished it, I have three other books about old Muskoka to read. So I’d better get on it.

Unless you have a connection to Muskoka, or you really, really like pioneer stories, there’s no point in reading this. For me, it was a great book. The detail and the quality of the writing make this a 5-star book—for me. For most people, it’s maybe a 3-star book. But, in the beauty of e-books, I’ll keep it in my library for a while.

book reviews, History

Book Review: Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man

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Once again, in the spirit of dis-accumulation, I picked a book to read that I wanted to read, but didn’t think I would keep. So I picked “Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man”, by Katherine Drinker Bowen. Published in 1963, the

The book is 50 years old and in good condition. It’s also a good, informative read. Alas, it’s not a keeper.

book I have may be a first edition. I’m not sure where I got this book. It may be one my dad picked up at a flea market, though there’s no sales sticker on it.

I must first say that, before reading this book, I knew almost nothing about Francis Bacon. I would have called him Sir Francis Bacon, noting either knighthood or respect, for that’s how I’ve heard him described over the years. But why was he famous? What did he do in England to acquire such fame?

I remember he was discussed in a book I read, a book about escape from POW camps during WW2. The POWs argued about something Bacon allegedly said or wrote. From this, I got the impression that Bacon was a writer and philosopher of sorts. But I knew nothing that he wrote, nothing that he said, nothing about his life and work.

This book, described by the author as an introduction to the man, was an easy, relatively short read at 236 pages. It showed Bacon as a loyal monarchist during the days of Queen Elizabeth 1st and King James 1st. He slowly rose in government service, through the law and fawning over the monarchs, but not as quickly as he wanted. He was constantly thwarted by one particular rival, Sir Edward Coke. The two vied for the same positions, the favor of the same monarchs and nobles, and Coke almost always won the day. Bacon, in consequence, would retreat to his abodes and write: sometimes on the law, sometimes on science, sometimes on politics or national policy.

His family was well placed, his father having been Lord Chancellor for Queen Elizabeth. I don’t really understand what that position is, but it was pretty high up in the government. Bacon got the short end of his father’s bequests upon the elder’s death, as most of the estate went to children by the elder Bacon’s first wife, Sir Francis having been born to the second wife. As a result, and due to his inability to adjust his lifestyle to his financial circumstances, was constantly in debt.

Due to losing so often to Coke, Bacon had lots of time to write. I won’t list his publications here. They include essays and legal treatises. None of them have I read, but after reading this book want to.

And that’s the measure of a biography, isn’t it? Does it spur you on to want to know more about the subject, to read his works? This biography has done that. I don’t think I have any of Bacon’s works in the house, but given that they are all out of copyright, I should be able to find them available on the internet. I bet I can also find a more complete biography from before 1925.

Now, the question is, how do I rate this book, and do I keep it? I rate it 5-stars, which is a rarity for me. I base that ranking on its brevity and ease to read, along with how it has caused me to want to know more. But it is not a keeper. I simply have too many books, and need to reduce my possessions. So onto the donate/sales shelf it goes. But I am very glad that I had it and

read it.

American Colonial History, Genealogy, History, research, Stars and Stripes, Writing

Research As A Motivator

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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.

America, family, History, memories

Disaccumulation Is Hard: Finding a Home for the “Stars & Stripes”

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Dad’s headline in the VE edition, Marseilles, France.

Dateline 26 July 2022

The day is surely coming when we will sell this big house and downsize into something smaller. Dis-accumulation is in progress. The next big item to go will be my collection of Stars & Stripes newspapers from World War 2.

It’s a lot of newspapers. Maybe as many as 200-300. I haven’t yet counted them.

The collection is mainly newspapers that my dad, Norman V. Todd, set type on as a G.I. during WW2 in Africa and Europe. Dad gave them to be in 1990 and I brought them home in 1997. There they sat. Twenty-five years and I’ve done nothing with them. I had such plans to read them, research them, and come to a better understanding of that war from the perspective of the men fighting it. Alas, that never happened.

I always thought these would be good to research the “fog of war”. How much printed as the war was in progress would be found to be inaccurate or untrue under the scrutiny of history?

Seven years ago I arranged to donate them to the World War 2 museum in Natick, Massachusetts. My first trip to RI since making that arrangement is coming up next month. I e-mailed the museum to confirm they still wanted them. Not receiving an e-mail in response, I called them this morning. The phone was not in service. A quick check on-line revealed that the museum closed in 2019. Bummer.

A wartime portrait, probably 1944. HIs “Stars & Stripes” insignia shows.

I’ll make this story a short one. Where could I donate them? Or was this a sign I should keep them, do that research that eluded me? I had already checked with the big WW2 museum in New Orleans, and they said they didn’t want any S&S. I checked with the S&S seven years ago, and it seems they didn’t need them.

I thought of three possible places: the University of Rhode Island, which has a special collections center at the university library; the University of Chicago, where our son works; and the Newberry Library in Chicago, an independent research library.  This morning I reached out to all three.

The University of Rhode Island got back to me first, and said they would be happy to take the collection. They often have students researching WW2, and this seems to be of value to them.

The trunk is a family heirloom. At least it will stay in the family for another generation, maybe two.

So the deal is complete. Next month these newspapers will find a new home. From 1943 to 1945, they went from Africa, Italy, and France to East Providence, then to Providence. Then in 1950 to Cranston. Then in 1997 to Bentonville Arkansas. Then in 2002 to Bella Vista Arkansas. All this time they have been in a steamer trunk that my grandfather, Oscar Todd, brought with him when he emigrated to the USA in 1910. The trunk will soon be at a different home in a cousin’s family, and the newspapers will be in Kingston RI.

In some ways, this feels like a betrayal, not to keep them in the family. I’m trying to look at it as solidifying Dad’s legacy in a permanent way, but it’s hard to do, and I’ve shed more than a few tears this afternoon on the realization that this piece of Dad will soon be gone.

Ah, well, when Dad first showed me them in 1990 (I had wondered, as a kid, what those trunks in the basement held; I learned then what filled one of them), he said he hadn’t looked at them since that trunk went into the basement in 1950. If they will now be in a place where maybe someone will make good use of them, where they will be protected and preserved, I guess that’s a better outcome. And my children won’t need to make a hard decision one day.

expatriate life, family, History, letters

The Kuwait Years In Letters

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Some time ago, in July 2020 to be more precise, I began transcribing the many letters we had written home from Kuwait, which our families had preserved for us. My original intent for doing this was to preserve the information and the letters themselves. The act of transcribing meant gathering, arranging, typing, and storage.

I wrote about this in several blog posts.

The first post, on getting started.

The second post, on the acceleration of the transcription.

The third post, a brief mention on progress.

The fourth post, on how the project came together.

Yesterday, I received a proof copy of the book. I’ve gone through it and found only two typos and one formatting problem. Of course, spelling and grammar in the originals wasn’t always correct.

In that fourth post, I said I hoped to someday add commentary and photographs and make the project into a book for our family. That day finally came. Two years ago, I said I hoped the book would be 300 pages. It is 299 pages. It contains 181 letters and around 30 photographs. I’m not sure how many of the 103,600 words are the letters and how much is my commentary. I also put in the four blog posts mentioned above as an appendix.

The photos turned out better than I expected.  I’m still learning how to manipulate photos. One of them is dark; I’ll need to figure out how to lighten it, preferably using G.I.M.P. rather than PowerPoint, so I can keep it at a good pixel count. The photos include some of the picture postcards we sent from our trips.

Our villa in Kuwait. I need to work on the back cover still.

Otherwise, there’s not much more to do with this. Make the few corrections, including one to the back cover, publish it, and order three copies: one for us, one for our son, and one for our daughter. Then I will un-publish it so that someone browsing my list of books won’t order one out of curiosity. The grandkids, if they want one of their own…well, that is unlikely to happen until they are older. I’ll worry about it then.

Once this project is over (and it’s really, really close), what next in terms of letters? Maybe transcribe the Saudi years letters? Or start with our juvenalia and go forward from there? We’ll see.

book reviews, History

Book Review: “Winthrop’s Boston”

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The value of this book for you depends entirely on what you are hoping to learn. For me it was meh.

Around five years ago, or maybe a little longer, I bought a used paperback copy of Winthrop’s Boston by Darrett B. Rutman (1965; my pb copy 1972, I think). I had never heard of the book, but I bought it for the purposes of reading history (which I love), understanding the world many of Lynda’s ancestors moved into when they arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s, and perhaps providing information for one of the Documenting America books. A couple of months ago, the book finally came to the top of my reading pile, and I read it.

I must say it wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I bought it. It was good, but the writer had an agenda. He set out to prove that Boston never quite became Winthrop’s “city on a hill”, and that the Puritan influence in Boston wasn’t as great as most historians lead you to believe.

Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. Rutman went to great lengths, in some cases to the point of being tedious, to prove his point. I struggled not to skip at times, and at times I did skip—not a lot, but especially toward the end I came to places where I saw no value to some part, and I skipped it. Shame on me. I guess I also wasn’t thinking when I bought the book. I was thinking it would be about all of Massachusetts Bay Colony. It really was just about Boston. The towns adjacent to Boston come up in the book a little, but not much.

The book has little genealogical information. Yes, a few family heads are mentioned.

The book is a dry history book. Worth the read if you are into studying the Puritans, but otherwise not. There would be better history books of Boston. But, if you have ancestors in Boston between 1629 and 1647 or so, and want to know more about what the city was like at that time, it is worth the read. The value of the book to you will depend on what you are looking for.  For me, it was just 2-stars.

And, it is not a keeper. Into the sale/donate pile it goes.

Bible study, Christianity, Documenting America, Health, History, home improvements, reading, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

Post Not Ready

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Six ads running for this, getting impressions, clicks, and a few sales. Other promotion is bearing fruit.

This morning I went outside to work shortly after I got up at 6:45 a.m. The temperature was 60°, and it felt good. I planned to work a half hour, mainly cleaning up a few things and pulling a few weeds from the backyard. When I did what I wanted and went inside, I was surprised to find I’d worked more than 45 minutes. I was way past scheduled time for my blog post, but I wasn’t worried about it since I had a post partially started—two posts actually—and thus could post it quickly once I got to it.

Alas, I finally came to my dashboard here, found there was only one post, and realized it is no where ready to be posted. Bad memory I have.

So here I am with nothing prepared to say. I could talk about any number of things off the cuff: what I’m writing, what I’m reading, how book sales are, what I’m doing for book sales promotion, life in general. I guess I could tackle all of those.

I’m still working on little changes to the church centennial book. I got some new information yesterday that will require a minor change. I also have decided to double-check a couple of places in the book. One I’m fairly sure will require a change, the other one maybe or maybe not. Still, I come closer to done on this every day.  Also, my short story inches along. Every couple of days I open the file, re-read it to remember where I was, and add a few hundred words. I need an uninterrupted , undistracted couple of hours to finish it.

For reading, my time is taken up with Way Truth Life, the book for our Life Group lessons. I’m also reading a book on the Genesis flood. Sorry, I don’t remember the exact title, except that it might be The Genesis Flood. It is a scholarly work from the late 50s-early 60s. I’m not enjoying it a whole lot, but will stay with it a while longer. As to recently finished books, I have four sitting here on my work table waiting for me to write my book reviews.

Book sales are good in September. So far I have 14 sales outright, and I think two accesses from Kindle Unlimited with both people finishing the book. This is my first time to have KU reads (not many of my books are in KU), and I need to figure how to account for them in my stats. I suppose as 2 sales, bringing the total to 16. That’s a good start to the month.

Sometime soon I’ll make a presentation to the local Civil War Roundtable. That will be my first author event since June 2019.

I have been a little more active in book promotion the last week. I still have my Amazon ads running for three books, and they seem to be generating sales. I contacted two influencers in our denomination, both men I’ve interacted with in the past, about giving a shout out to Acts Of Faith. I heard back from one on Friday and he is going to put a promo in his next newsletter.  Another promotional item concerns my Civil War book, Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Back in July I gave a copy of it to the president of the local Civil War Roundtable. I heard back from him yesterday. He liked the book and wants me to make a presentation to the Roundtable. I don’t yet know when that will be, but should know today or tomorrow. So book promotion is in progress and, at least a little, seems to be working.

Life in general is good. I’m still having trouble losing weight, but in general my weight is dropping very slowly. My blood sugars have been under control, though just a little higher than I’d like. This morning’s was good. My right knee has been hurting more of late. Perhaps replacement surgery will have to be moved up. Although, the last three or four days I’ve done a few different things to try and ease the pain and it seems to be working. Four nights of good sleep in a row. Yardwork is in much better shape than in past years. Household projects are slowly being done. My devotional life remains consistent, with room for improvement.

Life goes on. I’ll have a better post on Friday, and will start getting some of these book reviews done.

Christianity, History, research

Tied Up In Research

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A congregational photo taken in 1925, the earliest photo I could find. We have identified a few people in the photo.

Well, I’m late with my post today. Often I write my Monday morning post sometime during the weekend and schedule it for 7:30 a.m. Monday. Alas, that didn’t happen. My Saturday outdoor work was interrupted by rain, so I worked inside. Besides the usual clean-up, such as dishes, vacuuming, kitchen counters, laundry, decluttering, I worked on the checkbook (yes, I still keep the checkbook and make sure it’s correct to the penny) and budget. I then switched off to continue some research into our church’s centennial book.

As I’ve said before, it’s complete as to the writing. Well, almost complete, I have one more interview to do, and I decided I wanted to add one small section. Photos are something the committee will help me select.

One task I have taken on concerning church history—well, two tasks I suppose—is expanding the list of charter members. From history passed down, we know we had 63 charter members back in 1921. Alas, the names of only 12 were recorded. In fact, the church didn’t establish a record book until almost 3 1/2 years after they started meeting. Fortunately, the pastor at that time wrote the names of all who were then or who had been members before his coming. It is about 170 names. Of those 170, 63 were charter members and the others what I call “early members”. I decided to take on the task of figuring our who the missing 51 were.

I delayed that because I knew it was going to be a huge task. I was right. I established some criteria, researched the names, and was able to identify 32 people who I thought could be added to the 12 known charter members. I passed that list two three different people to check the names and see what they thought. Yesterday afternoon I met with two of them for nearly three hours. We went over every name on the list. Most of the names they were not able to rule in or rule out. One family they ruled out, being pretty sure they joined a little after the church began. One other family they added, being sure, from church lore passed down, that they were in fact charter members.

So where does that leave me? I have 12 known charter members, 34 probable charter members, and 42 possible charter members. The rest of the ±170 I have ruled out based on the research criteria I’ve set. The 12 + 34 add to 46, leaving me 17 still to be determined. Somehow, if I am to be successful with this task, I need to decide which 17 of the 42 were most likely charter members. That is my current research task.

One related item I’m working on is cross-checking that old record book to make sure I didn’t miss any names or any clues. I’m also working on documenting my research better than I have thus far. It occurred to me that some future historian will write another church history, maybe at our 150th anniversary. I want that historian to have confidence in my research. So I’m going back over every family, every name on that early members list, and doing the research over, but this time documenting everything I find in a Word file. I’m being meticulous. It’s slow going. Yesterday evening I documented the one family added to the list of probable charter members. There were four or five in the family but only the parents were on the early members list. They are now fully documented and added to the charter member list as “probables”.

While this is tedious work, and will take me a couple of months to do, It is also quite satisfying. It’s a mix of detective work and genealogy. Once research is finished, it will give way to writing. I have a section in the book giving the 170 names on the early members list, a section I will have to rewrite once the research is done.

Will it ever be done? Just as I finished my afternoon research session, I took a look again at the “H” page (since the next family I’ll do begins with an H), and realized I may have misinterpreted what that pastor wrote long ago and have to add some more H names to the early members list. I’ll do that happily, to be as accurate as I can.

Of course, I am hoping to return to creative writing at some point, more than just sneaking an hour or two of it in from time to time. The end is in sight.

Christianity, History

My Writing Project Is Done—Sort Of

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This man was instrumental in establishing our church. Yet almost no one in the congregation knows anything about him. His secrets will all be revealed. Well, maybe not all.

As I’ve said in other posts, my main writing project has been a book for our church’s 100th anniversary. Originally planned to be held in Oct 2021 (a delay due to covid), then pushed to around April 2022, and finally set for July 2022, the delays in the celebration mean I’m way ahead of schedule. But I really had no idea how big the book would be. So, predicting when I would finish it was difficult.

Yesterday I had a meeting with our pastor, my first with him to discuss the book since he asked me to write it last November. I’ve been running progress reports and snippets by the Anniversary Committee, and I’ve had drafts posted on our Google Drive site. And, I’ve shared the manuscript electronically with a couple of people outside of the church and received feedback. But, until you have the pastor’s blessing on the product, you don’t know whether you’re on the right path.

Fortunately, Pastor Mark seemed pleased with the book, maybe even impressed. He made some helpful suggestions on additions in a few places. I’ve already made a couple of those changes. The others will require interviewing people. They will be short interviews of people I have already spoken with.

At present, the book is a little over 28,000 words long, about double what I thought it might be when I undertook the project (though, as I said, I had no basis for knowing how long it would be). By the time I add these few items remaining, it should still be less than 29,000.

The main work remaining is to find photos and load them in the book. They will be placeholder photos, coming in at on-line quality (which won’t do for print). And the layout of those photos within the book will be somewhat of a nightmare. I’ll begin that work when I’ve put the last few words in the book and change the page size to the print size. Fortunately, one on our committee is an expert at digital layout. I’ll either turn the photo insertions over to her or will lean heavily on her expertise.

So when I say that the book is done, I guess I’m saying that all essential words are there. If some said to me tomorrow, “You’re out of time; we have to go to press now”, I would feel good about what’s already written and have no regrets. Sure, more high quality photos nicely arranged and a few more words would be worthwhile. But I will be happy whether they get in the book or not.

So, it’s almost on to the next project. Stay tuned for more about that.

America, Documenting America, History

Peaceful Transfer of Power: A Defining American Characteristic

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Both the people of the new nation and those who ran the government wanted power to transfer peacefully. With all in the same mindset, peaceful transfer happened.

This is now the third (and I think the last) post in my series on defining characteristics of the USA—those things that make us stand out from all other nations: peaceful transfer of power.

When we made our second attempt at being a new and independent nation, under a new Constitution, George Washington became our first president. So revered was he that he could have been president for life. Actually, Americans might have accepted him as king. But Washington knew that someday power would have to transfer from him to someone else. Two terms was enough, he thought. Let the transfer happen peacefully.

My book on the Constitution doesn’t spend a lot of time on transfer of power, but it’s a good primer on how we got this amazing document.

You see, historically, transfer of power had been a violent affair. If it was peaceful, it was because a monarch’s heir was clearly popular with the people and with those in leadership who had surrounded the now dead sovereign. Going back a long way, it was common for the new king to kill the other potential heirs, assuring that he wouldn’t be challenged in his position and that, sometime in the future, power would transfer to his own heir, without challenges. Yet, even at that, the new king (or queen) would often be challenged. Looking through the kings of Israel in the Bible books of Kings and Chronicles shows frequent struggles in the first few months of the new king’s reign.

This also happened in Europe. At least three times in British history a king was overthrown. Sometimes it occurred without bloodshed. The nation had become more sophisticated, so potential rivals weren’t killed off. Heirs in other nations weren’t always so lucky. A study of the transfer of power in Europe would be fascinating. The same for other countries outside Europe.

I just updated my first Documenting America book for conditions in 2020.

What about in America? Washington declined to run for a third term. The nation elected John Adams as president in 1796. Power transferred peacefully and the baby nation chugged on. But Washington and Adams were of the same political mindset. What would happen when someone with different beliefs came to power?

That happened in 1800, along with the first of what would later come to be called a “constitutional crisis”. Thomas Jefferson was elected president. Actually, he tied with his vice presidential running mate, Aaron Burr. It took a vote by the House of Representatives to break the tie, and a constitutional amendment to correct a minor flaw in the relatively new document so that such wouldn’t happen again. The point is, however, Jefferson, of a different political party than Adams, came to power and all was peaceful. The nation chugged on. Adams wasn’t exiled; his children weren’t killed; Jefferson didn’t kill off or exile other potential rivals. The people didn’t riot in the streets over who became president. All was peaceful.

The new nation was showing that we could govern ourselves. Peaceful transfer of power from one party to another occurred. No coercive force was necessary. The American experiment was succeeding.

Looking at future elections, the peaceful transfer of power occurred all the way up to 1860. The South couldn’t accept Lincoln as president and his new political party as the one that would be setting policy and making laws. Rather than accept that, they declared themselves no longer part of the United States of America. The government said no, you can’t do that. We have property in your state and we will defend that property. The southern states said oh yeah? Just try it. And civil war broke out. The North won (as we know), and the nation stayed as one nation.

After fourteen peaceful transfers of power, including once at the death of a president, we had our first experience with violent transfer. It wasn’t pretty.

We had a questionable transfer of power in 1876, as the winner of the election was in dispute. I have more study to do of that transfer. Suffice to say that a compromise was reached, a president was selected through a combination of constitutional provisions and cooler heads who didn’t want to go through another bloody transfer prevailing.

From that time on, we had peaceful transfers all the way up to 2000. Even in 2000 the transfer was peaceful, though the closeness of that election required the judicial branch to get involved. Some say the judicial branch stole the election from Gore and awarded it to Bush. Some say Bush won it outright (by a tiny margin) and the courts simply prevented Gore from demanding endless recounts. Either way, while the transfer of power was in question, and while we wish it hadn’t come down to the Supreme Court,  it happened peacefully.

Then came 2016. Trump won. Many people didn’t like it. The people who favored the other candidate took to protesting in the streets, though that died out. Transfer was contentious but, as the election wasn’t in doubt, was peaceful.

That brings us to 2020. While Biden appears to be leading and heading toward victory, that’s the way it was in 2016 and the outcome is not certain. But what is certain is that if Trump wins again there will again be protests in the street. Will these turn violent? Will the transfer of power—actually the need to not transfer power—be peaceful? Or, if Biden wins, will Trump peacefully allow the transfer of power to take place? Will we have a clear winner, or will the courts have to intervene again?

Peaceful transfer of power, a defining American characteristic. We are not far from seeing it end. It has happened because the people and leaders wanted it to happen, and because we had a supreme law that everyone accepted and revered. Right now we don’t know if either of them do. And that could have disastrous consequences of our country.