Category: Genealogy

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Enlightened Ancestor: Dr. Benjamin West

I can thank my migraines for Dr. Benjamin West.

When I am anxious or don’t feel well, I often do genealogy research to take my mind off things. I have always enjoyed learning about family history, but really got bitten hard by the bug the first time I had cancer, in 1994. I was at home recuperating, on painkillers and other drugs that made concentrating difficult, and I found message boards on AOL that were all about genealogy. And my ancestors were there! I connected with some very distant cousins and compared notes. I started learning more and more about my origins.

It occurs to me that we are all the products of our parents, who are the products of their parents, who were the products of theirs, and so on. Our parents don’t just pass genetics on to us. Even when we disagree about things like politics or religion or how to raise our children, the values of our parents are distilled into us, just like the values of their parents were distilled into them. We find that professions tend to run in families – a  certain branch of the family may tend to be lawyers, writers, preachers, doctors, architects, artists, military, etc.

An obituary notice in a newspaper from 1822 led me to him. He was named as the father of one of my 5th great-grandmothers, a woman whose origins were completely unknown to me before that moment.  The man was phenomenal, and I don’t understand why every generation after him hasn’t continued to hold him up as the pinnacle of the Enlightenment. This guy’s brain was so huge and active I don’t know how it managed to stay confined in his skull.

benj-west
Benjamin West, from the Brown University Portrait Collection

Benjamin West was born in Bristol, Massachusetts in March 1730. I think of him as the Stephen Hawking of his day. His accomplishments in math and science are truly remarkable because he was an autodidact – his formal schooling lasted a whopping three months of his childhood. He was poor and had to borrow every book he read until about 1758, when he managed to find some backers to open a dry goods store. A couple of years later, he opened the first bookstore ever to grace the commercial avenues of Providence, Rhode Island. He managed to pay for the books he so desperately wanted by selling them to other people.

He married Elizabeth Smith, daughter of Benjamin Smith, in 1753 when he was 23.  They were married for 53 years and had eight children, only three of whom survived Benjamin. The 1822 death notice for his daughter, Mary Smith West (wife of Oliver Pearce), in a Providence newspaper, alerted me to him. The death notice that mentioned her father was “Dr. Benjamin West of Providence.” Mary West Pearce died in Fayetteville, NC. Her daughter, Eliza West Pearce, married Dr. Benjamin Robinson, that guy from Vermont who tested out that newfangled smallpox vaccine on his little brother and his brother’s friends and basically got run out of Bennington for his efforts. Science is strong in my family!

Benjamin West was a brilliant mathematician and astronomer. His buddies were the founders of Rhode Island College, which later became Brown University. He loved mathematics and astronomy, and conferred with some truly fantastic minds of his day. He published annual almanacs for Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Providence, Rhode Island for nearly 40 years. He didn’t have the formal schooling necessary for good academic chops, though, and before he opened that dry goods and book store, he failed at operating a school. He tutored students privately for all of his adult life.

Astronomical Genius

In 1766, something would happen that ultimately would reverse his fortunes and open some gilded doors for him. A comet appeared in the constellation of Taurus on the evening of April 9. Being a good astronomer, Benjamin took careful measurements. The next day wrote a letter to an astronomer named John Winthrop who was at Cambridge College (now known as Harvard University). He had never met or corresponded with Winthrop, but was so excited about his observation he simply had to share it.

Providence, April 10, 1766

Dear Sir:

For the improvement of science, I now acquaint you, that the last evening, I saw in the West, a comet, which I judged to be about the middle of the sign of Taurus; with about 7 degrees North latitude. It set half after 8 o’clock by my watch, and its amplitude was about 29 or 30 degrees. Nothing, Sir, could have induced me to this freedom of writing to you, but the love I have for the sciences; and I flatter myself that you will, on that account, the more readily overlook it.

I am, Sir, yours,

Benjamin West

He and Winthrop became great friends and continued to write to each other. For the rest of their lives, they would share observations about the night sky.

1769 Transit of the Planets

Johannes Kepler and Edmund Halley figured out how to apply the theory of parallax to determine the distances between astronomical bodies.  With both Mercury and Venus predicted to pass between the Earth and the Sun in 1769, astronomers worldwide were anxious to test the theory. Since this was the first really good opportunity to view the transits of both inner planets since Kepler’s original accurate prediction in 1627 of the 1631 transit, everyone in the field of astronomy was excited. Captain Cook would famously observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti while on his ill-fated circumnavigation and while bringing European diseases and disharmony to the South Pacific. At the time of the last transit of Venus in 1761, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who had just finished their survey of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, had traveled to the Cape of Good Hope to observe it. All of these men used astronomy as an important part of their lives – navigating the oceans and surveying the land required precise measurements, and measurements started with the stars.

benjamin-wests-1769-telescope
Telescope used by Benjamin West, at Providence, Rhode Island, to observe the 1769 transit of Venus. Ladd Observatory, Brown University

There was no telescope in Providence in 1769. Benjamin West, Stephen Hopkins (the signer of the Declaration and great-grandson of the Mayflower passenger) and the four famous Brown brothers – they were among the founders of Rhode Island College, later known as Brown University – were determined to see the phenomenon, though, so they managed to import a telescope from England at the incredible expense of 500 pounds.  They set up on the outskirts of Providence. Transit Street in Providence is named after the spot where they viewed the transit on June 3, 1769. There are photos of the telescope on the Brown University website – the school still has it.

benjamin-wests-diagram-of-the-1769-transit-of-venus
Benjamin West’s diagram of the transit of Venus, 1769, from the Ladd Observatory, Brown University

As was his habit, Benjamin West made careful measurements of the transit. He published a tract (and dedicated it to his friend Stephen Hopkins) about the event. A copy of the tract made its way to John Winthrop at Harvard, and on July 18, 1770, Benjamin West – the man with only three months of formal education – was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from Harvard. Here’s the text of the notification letter from John Winthrop:

Cambridge, July 19, 1770

Sir —

I have the pleasure to acquaint you that the government of this college were pleased, yesterday, to confer upon you the Honorary degree of Master of Arts; upon which I sincerely congratulate you. I acknowledge the receipt of your favour, and shall be glad to compare any observations of the satellites.

Yours,

John Winthrop

American Academy of Arts and Sciences: the American Philosophical Society

That same year, Benjamin West was unanimously elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia – the American colonial version of Great Britain’s Royal Society. He would meet and befriend another author and publisher of almanacs there: a fellow named Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin West was still primarily a merchant at this time, and the Revolution was on its way. When full-blown war finally arrived, commerce dried up. He went to work manufacturing clothing for the American troops. He continued his studies and his correspondence with the other great minds, though.

Mathematics was Benjamin’s first love. In 1773 he wrote to a friend in Boston of a theorem he had developed to extract “the roots of odd powers” that was probably his greatest contribution to the field of mathematics. That’s right – he discovered a math formula that I can’t even begin to hope to understand, but other really smart people who could math really well understood it and lauded him for it. When he finally explained his theorem to other math geniuses in 1781, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences not only published it in one of their earliest journals but unanimously elected him to membership and awarded him a diploma. It was his second honorary academic degree, and he still supported by only three months of formal education. The theorem caught the attention of the European mathematical geniuses, who, giddy with discovery, also published it. Benjamin West, already pretty cool, became seriously hot stuff.

He didn’t stop at math and astronomical observations, though. One of the biographies I found explained a physics problem he cogitated upon for more than two years in conjunction with John Winthrop and a Mr. Oliver. It had to do with the properties of air in a copper tube that was then put into an otherwise airless container. The qualities of invisible gases – basically, the scientific understanding of the very concept of the physical nature and properties of “air” – were in their infancy. Our ancestor speculated about the attractive and repulsive nature of the tiny particles that made up the matter of air – what we now call its molecules – and how they would behave under different conditions. Gravity, matter, magnetism, and ultimately the behavior of the tails of comets played into his understanding of the question. This is stuff my brain simply isn’t big enough to handle.

Benjamin West’s mind was at the peak of its illuminating brilliance as the world around him heaved. His most important discoveries and writings happened as the American Revolution was about to explode.  By the end of the Revolution, he had returned to academic pursuits. He tutored students in math and astronomy. He still wasn’t rich; despite his prominence in academics he never became particularly wealthy. The well-endowed founders of what would become Brown University had not forgotten their friend, though. In 1786, he was elected to a full professorship there.

For some reason, he did not begin teaching at Brown for a couple of years. Probably because of his honors and his friendship with Ben Franklin and the rest of the gang at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Benjamin West was invited to teach at the illustrious Protestant Episcopal Academy there. The name of that school is familiar to members of my father’s family.  Although Benjamin West was the direct ancestor of my Arkansas-born mother, my dad, an Irish-Italian kid who grew up in the Philly suburb of Gladwyne, went to school at Philadelphia’s Episcopal Academy while his dad coached its sports teams. (Insert refrain from “Circle of Life” here.)

Brown University awarded Dr. West his first non-honorary degree, his Doctor of Laws, in 1792. He taught mathematics and astronomy there from 1788 until 1799. Then he opened a school of navigation and taught astronomy to seafaring men. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, this man loved to teach other people the wonders of the universe.

I’m proud of him for another reason, too: Benjamin West was a member of an active abolitionist group in Providence.

I’ve found several contemporary biographical accounts for Benjamin West. They are typical of their time: purple prose and flowery metaphors abound. They all reach one conclusion: Benjamin West was a genius. He was a determinedly self-educated man who contributed considerably to the arts of science and mathematics during his lifetime. He was truly a product of the Age of Enlightenment: a self-educated, self-made man whose gifts and prominence considerably exceeded his bank account.

This discovery of my ancestor Benjamin West is exactly why genealogy research is so rewarding. And given the anxiety-provoking events of November 8, I expect to be doing a lot more of it – in between my stepped-up schedule of political activities, that is.

Bibliography:

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Book of Members  (2016 edition), p. 252. Entry for Benjamin West, elected 1781, Fellow. Residence and Affiliation at election: Providence, RI. Career description: Astronomer, Educator, Businessperson, Book of Members; American Academy of Arts & Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Leonard Bliss, The History of Rehoboth, Bristol County, Massachusetts:  Comprising a History of the Present Towns of Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Pawtucket, From Their Settlement to the Present Time (Boston:  Otis, Broaders, and Company, 1836). Google Books

Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, Entry for Benjamin West (1730-1813), pp. 1096-1097.

Louise Hall, “Family Records: Newby Bible”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 122 (Apr 1968):  125-128, 125.

Martha Mitchell, “Benjamin West”, Encyclopedia Brunoniana (1993).

John Chauncey Pease, John Milton Niles, A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode-Island:   (Hartford:  William S. Marsh, 1819), 331-333. Biographical entry for Dr. Benjamin West.  Google Books.

Unattributed, “Biography of Benjamin West, L.L.D.  A.A.S.:  Professor of Mathematicks, Astronomy and Natural Philosophy, in Rhode Island College – and Fellow of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, &c.”, The Rhode Island Literary Repository Vol I, No. 7 (October 1814):  137-160 (337-360).

Benjamin West Papers; Rhode Island Historical Society Library, 121 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02906.

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How My Family Helped Start a Shitstorm Called “Vermont”

During a recent visit with cousins from out of state, I learned that my mother’s family’s Mayflower connection is through Mercy Leonard, the wife of Samuel Robinson. I started doing a little digging to confirm this. I haven’t found the Mayflower connection yet, because, hey, I just started looking, but I found something else that grabbed my attention.

Because I get absurdly excited by all of these family history discoveries, I have to share. Grab a Bloody Mary (yeah, we’re related to her, too, but it’s way distant) or pour another glass of grape juice, and settle in for a little history lesson.

In the mid-eighteenth century, both France and Britain claimed parts of what is now Vermont.  To further complicate matters, three British colonies – New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – laid claim to at least a portion of Vermont’s territory. They argued nastily among themselves as to which colony had the right to issue land grants in the area. In 1741, to the relief of New Hampshire and New York, a royal decree finally prevented Massachusetts from claiming lands north of its current border. But the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War, broke out in 1756 over territorial lines between the American colonies claimed by France and those claimed by England. Vermont lies less than 50 miles south of Montreal. Its territory was very hotly disputed.

The British finally took control of Ticonderoga (New York) and Montreal (Quebec), and in 1760 signed a peace agreement with France to end the North American portion of the conflict. The North American battles between France and England that started in 1756 had spilled over to Europe, where it the Seven Years War finally ended for good in 1763, making it last – you guessed it – seven years.

Even though the European superpowers had resolved their territorial differences, the British colonies had not. Before the ink was dry on the North American peace agreement, New Hampshire colonial governor Benning Wentworth began making land grants in disputed territory. His motivation was partly a colonial power struggle and partly avaricious land speculation. Many of the settlements that sprang up as a result of Wentworth’s land grants were named for Wentworth and his rich and powerful pals who he hoped would support him when New York predictably got testy over the whole matter. The very first of these land grants went to our ancestor, Samuel Robinson, for Bennington.  Samuel knew the area because he had camped there with his troops during the French and Indian War.

Samuel Robinson died in London, England on October 29, 1767. He had been elected by a convention of Vermont towns to go to the king to petition for validation of the New Hampshire land grants. He succeeded but was stricken by smallpox before he could return home. In a twist of fate, his grandson Dr. Benjamin Robinson (1776-1857), would pioneer smallpox vaccination in America.

The territorial dispute among the colonies was not resolved before the Revolution. Vermont was never a separate English colony. Depending on who was asked, it was part of either New Hampshire or New York. In 1777, during the Revolution, Vermont declared itself to be a separate Republic because of the land disputes between New Hampshire and New York. After the Revolution, in 1791, Vermont became the 14th state. The New Hampshire land grants pretty much prevailed once everything shook out.

My 7th great-grandfather Captain Samuel Robinson was a product of the First Great Awakening, an evangelical religious movement that started in New England in the 1730s. This evangelical movement championed a version of separation of church and state that was first proposed by Roger Williams when he founded Providence, Rhode Island, along with Richard and Catherine Marbury Scott. (FYI: Catherine Marbury Scott is my favorite of our direct ancestors. Her older sister, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, was utterly amazing, and I’m going to be just like her when I grow up. That means I’ll be run out of Boston and killed by restless natives on Long Island, but that’s another story.)

Roger Williams promoted the notion that freedom of thought, of opinion, and of the press would inspire individual religious belief, not dogma dictated by a ruling hegemony of religious leaders. Naturally, these religiously “free” places – like Providence – permitted their leaders to impose their version of religion on local residents. The movement was born in Puritan New England, after all. (Non sequitur: Massachusetts was the last state – yes, state – to abolish established religion in the United States in 1833.)

Our illustrious forebear did all he could to ensure only the right sort of Christians were his neighbors. Mercy Leonard Robinson and her children are buried in Old Bennington Cemetery, next to the church Samuel Robinson founded there. The original church building no longer exists, but its replacement celebrated its 200th birthday in 2006.

After the Revolution, Mercy and Samuel’s son Moses (named for Mercy’s father – it’s her I’m researching, remember) was a member of the delegation sent by the Republic of Vermont in 1782 to the Continental Congress to work out the territorial dispute with New York. He later served as governor of the Vermont Republic and oversaw its transition to statehood. He served as one of the first pair of senators from Vermont. Several of Samuel and Mercy Leonard Robinson’s sons were prominent leaders in politics and medicine. Religion, not so much. That was their father’s bailiwick.

Thomas Jefferson is credited in legal doctrine with the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” because of a letter he wrote to the Baptist Church leaders in Danbury, Connecticut in 1803. Before the famous Danbury letter, though, he wrote a letter to Moses Robinson in 1801 on the subject. The original is at the University of Virginia among Jefferson’s papers. Jefferson, who had been President for less than a month at the time the letter was written, expressed dismay that so many of the clergy seemed to want to establish a state religion, and ended his letter with a complaint that still rings in my ears today – mostly because I listen to my own words, and I pontificate about this a lot:

The eastern States will be the last to come over [to Jefferson’s notion of a secular and scientific nation], on account of the dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell of union between Church and State, and began to indulge reveries which can never be realised in the present state of science. If, indeed, they could have prevailed on us to view all advances in science as dangerous innovations, and to look back to the opinions and practices of our forefathers, instead of looking forward, for improvement, a promising groundwork would have been laid. But I am in hopes their good sense will dictate to them, that since the mountain will not come to them, they had better go to the mountain: that they will find their interest in acquiescing in the liberty and science of their country, and that the Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.

Today, I’d insert “Southern and Midwestern” for “eastern” in that first line. In fairness to Jefferson, not only was the letter written before the Civil War and Dust Bowl devastated the economies of those regions, thereby providing fertile ground for more religious fervor, it predated the Louisiana Purchase.

According to a recent Gallup poll, Vermont is now the least religiously inclined state in the nation. I assume 7th great-grandfather Robinson would not be near as amused as I am by this, especially since his own sons began selling land to the wrong sorts as soon as old Sam was room temperature.

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Patriotic Atheist American Heritage

Recently, I posted some hate mail on Facebook that the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers received from someone named Carey Dove. This email said that atheists have no heritage in the United States, that we aren’t real patriots, and that we don’t have the courage to step up and play with those who are.

Dear Carey Dove:

I’ve studied constitutional law, history, and my own genealogy. I know what my heritage is. Apparently, you don’t know me at all.

So, let me give you a little introduction to me, my knowledge about the Constitution, and whether or not I have any American heritage.

We’ll start with the constitutional lesson.

Portrait of George Mason (1725-1792), Dominic W. Boudet, after John Hesselius, c. 1750. This is a copy of the original, which was destroyed.

George Mason wrote the first bill of rights to be adopted in the Americas. His Virginia Declaration of Rights, written in the spring of 1776, influenced revolutions on two continents. The Declaration of Independence drew heavily from it. The Bill of Rights plagiarized it. The French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen tracked it. Its final provision was to grant religious freedom to Virginians.

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, 1940, Howard Chandler Christy 1872-1952, American)

George Mason was a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia when fifty-five men from twelve of the newly formed states argued about how to replace the unworkable Articles of Confederation. Mason dominated the discussions. Ultimately, he was one of three delegates who voted against it, primarily because it did not contain a bill of rights – there were no constitutional guarantees of personal liberty.

He would be vindicated four years later when the Bill of Rights was adopted. The first two of those enumerated rights listed in the very first of the amendments address religious freedom.

So, now we have established that our constitution, and the history that preceded it, includes religious freedom. That means the freedom to dissent and to reject religion, because without the freedom to dissent and reject what we find to be wrong with religion, there can be no freedom in our practice of religion. And if we ultimately reject it all? That is the ultimate freedom.

So now I’ll embark on explaining the pedigree I have in this country.

A few years ago I was chosen to be on the Board of Regents that oversees the maintenance and operation of George Mason’s historic home in Virginia.

Gunston Hall and its garden, Wikimedia Commons

I was invited to sit on that board because of who my ancestors were. My European ancestors not only lived in colonial America, but they gave their time, talents, efforts, and money in public service to their colonies. They were politicians, military officers, doctors, judges, ministers, founders of schools, and founders of towns. They spoke out. They acted. They were patriots.

Who they were and what they did has shaped our country and its government. They shaped our states and our institutions. Their words and actions are this country’s heritage, and this country is their legacy.

On a very personal level, who they were and what they did has shaped who I am personally, and what I do. Their behavior, values, strengths, words, intelligence, and deeds are my heritage, and I am the culmination of their legacy.

Anne Marbury Hutchinson statue at the Massachusetts State House. The child is her daughter Susannah, who survived the Pelham Bay massacre.

One of my favorite ancestors is my 11th great aunt, Anne Marbury Hutchinson. Anne Hutchinson was a well-liked and respected mother of 15 children. She was brilliant, charismatic, and a passionate intellectual. She was also the polestar of a controversy that nearly shattered the religious experiment that was the infant Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Anne and her husband Will came to America in 1634 with a Puritan minister named John Cotton, who would eventually become the most preeminent theologian in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Unlike the Puritan ministers already in Boston when he and the Hutchinsons arrived, John Cotton believed that a person had no control over his salvation, which depended solely on God’s grace. This was Calvinist predestination in its purest sense, but it was contrary to what other Puritan ministers were teaching. They taught that the good works done by a person were the only ticket to salvation.

Boston was a small town in 1634. Click to embiggen, and note that every single household is listed. Will & Anne Hutchinson and their large extended family stayed with friends and relatives while their own home was being built. The population of the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Plantations was about 5,000 people. (Map from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center Collection at the Boston Public Library)

The Hutchinsons were wealthy in England but even wealthier in the colony. They built one of the largest homes in Boston. After church services, Anne Hutchinson would invite other women to gather in her home to discuss the sermons and the Bible. Anne’s meetings were very popular with the women of Boston, and soon men joined in.

Anne Hutchinson Preaching at Her House, 1901 (Howard Pyle, 1853-1911, American)

Like her mentor, John Cotton, Anne emphasized the importance of a state of grace over good works. People liked what she had to say. They were focused on feeding their families and running their businesses; they didn’t have time for unlimited acts of charity. As the number of people at her meetings escalated, Anne’s philosophy quickly leaked back to the Puritan clergy. Boston was a very small town in 1634.

The ministers claimed that Anne’s “unauthorized” religious gatherings “might confuse the faithful.” They argued the theological point of predestination – good works versus inherent grace – among themselves, and ultimately, Anne was charged with heresy – not because the leaders of Boston disagreed with her philosophy, but because they claimed she accused them of being more concerned with good works than the grace of God, to which she basically replied, “If the shoe fits…”

John Cotton, however, was not charged.

Anne Hutchinson on Trial, 1901 (Edward Austin Abbey, 1852-1911, American)

Anne was a woman, so she was not authorized to preach.

Left to her own devices, Anne Hutchinson, the first female defendant in any trial in America, defended herself at her heresy trial, which was prosecuted by John Winthrop, her neighbor and the governor of the colony. Governor Winthrop was most displeased with Anne’s religious dissent because his wife, Margaret, was very fond of attending the meetings in the Hutchinson home and brought home with her ideas he found unbecoming in a woman.

And like the Reverend Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, who was modeled after him, John Cotton essentially betrayed Anne to the powerful citizens who brought the charges against her. When he was called to testify, Cotton denied that he had incited any dissent in Anne, and smiled and shrugged, claiming he did not remember the substance of any of his conversations with her.

It is no accident that this red A, the icon of the secular movement, evokes the scarlet letter Hester Prynne was required to wear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel.

Upon hearing his repudiation, Anne Hutchinson did something she had been forbidden to do: she began to teach the men. While her teaching had been in private before, here, now, at her trial for heresy, she took off the gloves and came out punching. “If you please to give me leave, I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true.” Without waiting for permission, Anne continued speaking, explaining her own history, her dissatisfaction with the Church of England, and her search for the truth she knew had to exist.

Governor Winthrop attempted to interrupt her. She ignored him and continued.

“God did discover unto me the unfaithfulness of the churches and the danger of them, and that none of those ministers could preach the Lord aright.” Scripture fell from her lips as she brazened on, daring to teach, despite an exchange with Governor Winthrop earlier in her trial during which they had exchanged barbs about the ability of women to teach. (“What, now you would have me teach you what the Bible says?” she mockingly exclaimed to him.)

One of my favorite quotes from Anne’s lecture during the trial is:

“How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment?” Never mind that, chronologically speaking, Abraham knew nothing about any commandments.

Governor John Winthrop was also, conveniently, one of the judges, so naturally Anne Hutchinson was convicted, and in November 1637, she was banished from Massachusetts.

Anne was 43 years old at the time of her trial. She was also pregnant, and during the trial she suffered a miscarriage. The superstitious Puritans allied against her saw the severely malformed fetus as proof that Anne had fallen from God’s grace. Chromosomal anomalies are not uncommon in older mothers. This would be Anne’s last pregnancy.

Anne’s youngest sister was my 10th great-grandmother, Catherine Marbury Scott. Catherine and her husband, a shoemaker named Richard Scott, came to America on the Griffin with the Hutchinsons and John Cotton in 1634. They left Boston with Anne, first joining Roger Williams at a place he called Providence, in the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations secured by Williams as a separate colony. Williams had himself been banished from Boston in 1635, the year after the Hutchinsons and Scotts had arrived, for preaching that one did not need a a church in which to worship.

The Providence Agreement or Civil Compact, with Richard Scott’s signature. Rumor is that it’s all in his handwriting. (Providence City Archives). It reads:

August 20, 1637

We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active and passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for the public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things.

[Signed by Richard Scott and twelve others.]

In Providence, the Scotts, along with many other of Anne’s followers from Boston, created a new community. Richard Scott wrote the Providence Compact, which was then signed by each of the 39 heads of household to come to that place. They became Baptists for a while, then Quakers. Then, in 1660, Catherine returned to Boston to protest the punishment of two young Quaker men. For her efforts, she was stripped to the waist and flogged in public. Even though Boston had been unspeakably cruel to her sister 23 years before, Catherine did not hesitate to speak out when she saw the government do something wrong. She was a worthy bearer of her sister Anne’s torch.

Anne herself was afraid to stay in Providence, especially after her husband’s death. Massachusetts had rattled its saber at the Rhode Island settlers, claiming it had the right to govern them, so she fled with her children to Long Island. There, in 1643, she and all but one of her children were murdered by natives. How long might she have lived had she not been run out of Boston? How much more might she have contributed to the ideas of women’s rights and freedom of conscience had she remained in Boston?

Far from being dour, rigid Puritans, Anne and Catherine were firebrands.

Anne Hutchinson is a key figure in the development of religious freedom in the U.S., and in the history of women in ministry. She challenged authority, and she didn’t back down. A monument to her at the Massachusetts State House calls her a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” She is easily the most famous – and infamous – Englishwoman in colonial American history.

Anne Hutchinson was a freethinker in the truest sense of the word: Dogmatic as she was in her own way, she seriously contemplated her religion, a deity, and the teachings of those who claimed to know, and then she drew conclusions for herself. The conclusion she reached was not the one that was favored in Boston in 1637. Nevertheless, she did not back down. She had the courage of her convictions, and today she is admired and even revered for her steadfastness.

I admire her enormously. Her courage in the face of adversity, her sustained intelligent wit, her sublime sarcasm – right to the face of the most powerful man in Massachusetts! This – this is a woman I can only hope to live up to as I exercise the courage of my own convictions.

Firebrand atheism: an in-home “revival,” with Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist, at my house in December 2012.

When I speak up and speak out, when I hold meetings in my home, when I dissent from religion, when I give my time, money, and talents to my community and to issues I care about, I am following the legacy of my heritage. I am doing exactly what my ancestors have done ever since they first came to this continent – and before.

For the 392 years that we’ve been in America, it’s been my family’s tradition to speak up and speak out and to act on our convictions.

And that, Carey Dove, is a very proud heritage, with full knowledge of where our religious freedoms came from, with full knowledge of when they did not exist here, and with full knowledge of what happens when dissent is not allowed – and why it most definitely and wholeheartedly is.

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Dinner Party

Longer ago than is comfortable, a friend asked me who I’d invite to the ultimate dinner party. I could have five people from any point in history to my ideal gathering. I apologize for the delay in answering. I’ve had to really think on this one, though.

Questions like these are so “Miss America” at first blush. “Oh, well, I’d invite Hillary Clinton because she’s going to be the first female president, and Oprah, because she’s just so clever, and Fabio, because he’s so hot, and Martha Stewart so she could give me decorating tips and, um, Bob Barker because he has so much history with the pageant!” (Insert high-pitched giggle here.)

I thought I’d be able to dash off this list with no problem. But then I started thinking about it. Five people, from any point in time, could be sitting around my dining room table. Presumably, I wouldn’t have a migraine. Presumably, I could also have it catered so I would be free to talk uninterrupted with my guests. Presumably, everyone would play nice no matter their opinions on matters so we could have discussions and not shouting matches. Who would be really interesting? Most importantly, who would be engaging as well as interesting?

I kept thinking of people and eliminating them for various reasons.

Eleanor of Aquitaine sprang to mind immediately. What an absolutely fascinating woman! Wife of two kings and mother of three, this woman wielded more relative power in her day than Hillary Clinton can dream of. Eleanor went on a Crusade! Granted, she bungled it, but she went. She spent years in prison because her second husband, Henry II of England, discovered that she was plotting against him with their sons Henry, Geoffrey, and Richard. Her youngest son, who became King John when Richard the Lion-Hearted succumbed to his excesses, is probably the most vilified king in English history, yet she supported him with the steadfastness only a mother could have mustered – even when he murdered her grandchildren to secure his claim to the throne. She would literally stop at nothing to get her way. But I don’t tend to like ruthless bitches. Scratch Eleanor from the guest list.

Saint Peter and his buddy Saint Paul. I hold them personally responsible for screwing up a peaceful message of acceptance preached by an itinerant rabbi a couple of thousand years ago, not to mention ultimately igniting one of the worse holocausts of the mind as reason took a back seat to blind faith under the guise of a religion. I have some hard questions for both of them. Frankly, though, the discussion would ruin my appetite as Peter tried to justify forming a church where there was not meant to be one, and as Paul tried to justify just about everything he ever wrote. The saints are therefore uninvited to dinner. Ditto Constantine the Great, who, although not a Christian himself made sure the message was further screwed up. Uh-oh. I’m sensing a soapbox under my feet. I had better step down before I start something that will take eons to finish. Next subject, please.

I have some famous ancestors and relatives. The aforementioned Constantine is one of them. Another is Anne Marbury Hutchinson, a dissident preacher in Boston Colony in the mid-1600s. After a notorious trial at which the governor of the colony, John Winthrop, was pretty much the prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, he banished her from the colony entirely. Since she was pregnant, he magnanimously allowed her to remain through the winter and give birth before departing. She was basically run out of Providence, too – a colony her sister helped start – and was eventually killed by natives at her home on Long Island. She was a woman of passion, intellect, and courage. But she was a fanatic. Fanatics tend to upset my digestion. Nope, Anne is off the guest list.

Well, they are five who would be fascinating but not at dinner. Maybe I’ll have them for cocktails on the deck and send them home before the shouting starts.

Who would I want to share a meal with?

My dad, who I miss more than any person I’ve ever lost. My paternal grandparents, who died before I could know them as an adult. My Italian immigrant great-grandfather, who braved a new world in the days of steamers and gas lights. My Irish immigrant 3rd great-grandmother, the illegitimate child of a prominent family of Kerry, who as a single woman made her way across the ocean to settle in Chicago during the famine. These are the people who I love and who I have heard stories of my whole life. Two of them told me most of those stories.

My grandfather is the reason I went to college where I did. When the school went co-ed in the early 70s “Big John” was delighted. “Now you can go to Colgate as something other than the team mascot!” he told me. Big John was All-American at Colgate and my junior year he was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. After his own graduation he coached football at Colgate, then after World War II scouted for the Philadelphia Eagles. I inherited not a single one of his athletic genes. On the wall of his office, he hung pictures of himself with people like John Wayne, OJ Simpson (long before the trial of the century), and Connie Mack. He was my favorite grandparent by far. He died when I was 16 so there’s a lot I never had the opportunity to talk about with him. He was the son of Italian immigrants, and the stories of his family that I have been told by cousins and by my dad are absolutely fascinating. We have a lot of unfinished business, Big John and me.

Big John’s first wife, Betty, is also on the guest list. She died when my dad was a teenager. I look like her. In fact, her mother, who lived to be 104, believed I was Betty from the time I was about 10. I know very little about Betty, but the few photos I have of her are like looking in the mirror and seeing myself without a widow’s peak. The generation that knew her was gone before I had enough sense to ask questions. Yes, I very much want to meet this woman.

And Dad himself… My dad died very suddenly four years ago. I would want him at the dinner with his parents for several reasons. First, because I miss him more than I ever dreamed I could miss anyone, and I would give just about anything to sit at the table with him one more time with an endless supply of wine, and an infinite amount of time just to talk. I loved talking with my dad at the dinner table. He and I would talk for hours after the table was cleared, pouring glass after glass, getting more and more sloshed, solving all the problems of the world. I wonder if we’d dare drink that much if his mother was there. I know his father would keep up with us, glass for glass and bottle for bottle until the sun rose and set and rose again. I’m getting a horrific hangover just thinking about it.

I’d also want Dad there because I would give more than just about anything to see him reunited with his mother. She died when he was 15 and he never stopped missing her or grieving for her. He adored her. The third reason for Dad to be there is because I always loved hearing him reminisce about the aunts and uncles, especially the Italian ones. If his parents were there they’d have so many of these family stories to relate! It would be a dinner party that would last an entire weekend at least.

And that’s why I’d want the immigrant grandparents. My Italian great-grandfather, Attilio, was a businessman. He was the youngest son of an affluent wine-making family in Northern Italy and came to America to scout the market for wine. He and another brother, Gaetano, established a winery in New York. When Prohibition hit, they stayed afloat for a while selling to the Catholic Church, but sips of communion wine weren’t enough to keep the family winery in business. The wines they had been importing from the family’s Italian operation couldn’t come into the country at all. My grandfather was a teenager when the winery went bust, and I haven’t heard enough of the stories of how the family survived. I want to learn more.

And then there’s the Irish great-grandmother, Betty’s great-grandmother. She was barely out of her teens when she came to America with her brother. They settled in Chicago in a large Irish expatriate community. She had married a man who was from the same county in Ireland. Unlike the more affluent Italians, my Irish ancestors came with little more than the clothes on their backs. Tracing her father’s side of the family has been almost impossible, even with several of us making trips to Ireland to look at parish records. I want her to fill in the missing blanks in the genealogy, and I want to hear her story of immigration and survival.

Yes, I want to have my family to dinner. And I want the Italians to bring plenty of the fermented juice of the vine so we can get completely sauced while we laugh and talk. I want that meal to last a week.

The problem is that I want to have the family members to dinner on a different night than I have the historical people over for drinks. The conversations would be completely different. I wouldn’t want to interrupt the family tales for the adventure stories, nor would I want to interrupt the adventure stories to hear family memories. I definitely want to hear them both, but the family is for dinner and the others are for cocktails.

So, I’m having two parties. You’re welcome to attend, but I’ll have to insist you be a fly on the wall at the family reunion. You won’t mind terribly, will you?

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Rob-Bell

Our plantation, Rob-Bell, is still farmed by us and by our cousins through a family corporation, but the acreage between Highway 161 and Old River Lake was set aside for horses, pecans, and golf. My great-grandfather built the six-hole golf course there. My grandfather planned to add another green but died before he carried out the plans. My father now wants to add the remaining three holes in one of the pastures that is largely unused by the horses.

Because Mound Lake (formerly known as Mound Pond) is being developed and lots are selling for exorbitant amounts, Dad wants to add another nine holes across the highway along Plum Bayou and sell more lots. He figures if everyone else is selling off plantations to have Southern Living-style homes built, we ought to cash in on the deal, too. Their house still resembles a Motor Court, though, not a Southern Living mansion.

The land comes through the women in our family. My great-great-grandmother came to Arkansas with her parents in the 1850s. An uncle was granted a patent to part of the land in the 1820s before Arkansas became a state. I don’t know why her father, Thomas Pemberton, decided to leave North Carolina for the Arkansas wilderness.

Shortly after they arrived in Arkansas, the children were stricken with smallpox. Laura survived, but one of her younger brothers did not. He is buried on the plantation. On a visit in 1860 to her own mother in Alabama, Laura’s mother died in childbirth. Laura and her baby sister lived with their maternal grandmother for a year, but then their father came for them. He took them to his family in North Carolina while he and Laura’s remaining brother, a toddler, returned to Arkansas.

Laura’s new sister died shortly after the end of the war. Laura lived with her Pemberton relatives and did not return to Arkansas until her husband, Dr. O.P. Robinson, decided life as a farmer was more appealing than life as a healer. Their only child to survive to adulthood was my great-grandmother, Alice, who was born in Arkansas and grew up here.
After studying in England and Germany, Alice returned to Arkansas. She met Gordon Campbell, an insurance agent, and married him in 1905. As her parents had done, Alice and Gordon kept a house in Little Rock and a house in “the country,” as the Scott plantation was referred to. Their county house, however, was strictly used as a weekend retreat. It was built on the bank of Old River Lake.

Alice and Gordon had four children. Their only son was Robinson, who died in an automobile accident when he was in his twenties. The children and grandchildren of their three daughters, Margaret, Laura, and Sue, now have control of the plantation and the recreation land. Although all of their granddaughters have weekend homes on the lake, only my aunt Laura and my cousin Lisa (Sue’s granddaughter) live there permanently. The land continues to pass through the women in the family since neither of the grandsons has any interest in even visiting the land.

Gordon Campbell was not just any insurance agent. I’m not just saying this because he was my great-grandfather. I have notorious ancestors. He’s not the only one, but I’ll talk about my grandfather Orsi later.

Dr. Robinson and Laura Pemberton Robinson died only a few years after Alice’s marriage. As the husband of the only surviving Pemberton-Robinson child, Gordon became familiar with the Plantation by necessity. Fortunately, he was competent. I have no idea what Alice herself contributed to the management of the land, but Gordon’s contributions are everywhere: the golf course, the stables, the houses, the pecan groves.

My great-grandfather was prominent in the Little Rock community. His efforts made War Memorial Stadium a possibility. His portrait still hangs there. He would be sorely disappointed to know that his achievement in getting the Razorbacks to play football in Little Rock is being undone now. I think he would have hated Frank Broyles for that. Orville Henry was still writing about Gordon less than ten years ago.

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