How email became my worst nightmare.

Holy Crap!  What a mess.   I'm 66 years old and you would think I'd know better than to let something like this happen.  What happened you ask?   I changed internet providers.   I dumped Comcast...is that cheering I hear?  Comcast finally got some "real" competition here in town...Fiber to the home service, fast stuff, much faster than cable even, and a promise of good customer service.   So far my speed tests have verified what Metronet has promised, at least as far as the speed....and the service is cheaper than Comcast.  It comes with up to seven new email addresses....woo-hoo~!

So here is the problem, and it is one that has been building ever since I first got Comcast and opted to use a Comcast email instead of one of the big, free, online email services like gmail or Yahoo or MSN, AOL, etc.  Actually I did get a gmail address around 2008 and I used it on occasion, mainly I thought of it as a back up service in case something happened with Comcast.  Every time I signed up for a newsletter, or joined some online service I gave them the comcast email.   When businesses asked for my email I gave them the Comcast address, when I made a political donation I gave them the Comcast address, when I ordered something online I gave them my Comcast address,  everyone I've corresponded with since about the year 2005 has my Comcast address, friends, relatives, business associates, everyone.  

Ok...all you smart people out there can start laughing now.   I can see you shaking your heads, wondering how I could have been so dense.  I deserve it...

Of course this very issue is probably the reason all the internet providers out there offer "free" email...  like a worm on a hook...once you swallow it, and especially if you use it for a long time then switching away from that internet service company is going to be very painful...and they know that. They want it to be painful to leave.

I've spent the last four days going through my contacts folder....deleting a lot of old ones, addresses for people I have no idea who they are or why I have their addresses in my contacts....Those I recognize I've been sending a change of address email, directing them all to the gmail account.   I've also been going through all the newsletters, and services where my email is used, making changes on those I want to continue to receive....and smugly ignoring those who I don't want to hear from again.

I did set up a couple of address boxes with the new server...one will be used only for a small handful of the companies that I wish to still get advertising from, or daily news headlines, political or financial commentary and the other is reserved for junk...if I make a political donation that special email address will be used...it will be a box that I can look at occasionally, and then just delete the entire contents. If the hardware store wants my email I'll probably tell them NO, but if they insist, well, they will get that special address. robjnk@newprovider.com  It will be my email version of a "drop-gun".

I will probably forget changing something, or someone, but I'm getting most of them and even at age 66 I'm still capable of learning a lesson the hard way.  If you too want to prevent a nightmare like this, do as I say, not as I do.  

Politically Incorrect

TRIGGER WARNING: examples of hateful racial, ethnic, & religious slurs below.  You have been warned.

I was thinking about something Donald Trump keeps saying...  that he sick of "Political Correctness" and that it is "killing our country".  Jeb Bush was pretty ticked off the other day too after being caught in a Political Correctness "got ya!"    I'm thinking to myself...Trump is just an asshole who will use anything as an excuse for having no control over his mouth.  The anchor baby comment by Bush might be another story.  Has political correctness gone too far?  While political correctness is sometimes, maybe even often, over done I see it as one way to at least put a sock in the mouths of those who have no self control, but have we become so obsessed with the idea that we can't hurt anyone's feelings that certain topics are off limits or so limited by the fear of saying anything incorrectly that we just avoid the whole issue?  

I thought I should at least read up on "political correctness", what it is, how and when it came about...I just wanted to find a quick executive summary of the topic..sadly, none exist. It's a much larger subject than I initially gave it credit for.  However, after reading or reviewing a dozen or so articles I was able to learn a few of the basics.   The phrase has been around for quite a long time, much longer than I would have suspected.   That the meaning of political correctness varies with the person describing it and that the definition has changed  so often it has become a nearly a useless phrase. Most often is is used as a hammer, and you hear it used as a hammer more often by those on the right. At least that's my conclusion, and I don't mean hammer, as in "a useful tool", I mean hammer as in a weapon used to bludgeon others.

On the one hand political correctness makes for more polite conversation. I'll give it that much.  The use of words that can be hurtful like chink, dink, darky, half-breed, hymie, jap, jungle bunny, raghead, sambo, mackerel snapper, wetback, and wop are discouraged. That's a good thing.  Where Donald Trump and I disagree is that I don't see "political correctness as being inherently bad, unless it goes way overboard, which sadly, seems to be the case more often than I'm comfortable with.    To me "political correctness is about using respectful language, be it based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.  

Beyond acting to modify crude comments political correctness is overdone and in some cases people have just gone nuts.   Take the subject of "trigger warnings".  That the very idea of a topic is so offensive that we can't even talk about it without first warning our listeners that some part of the discussion might be uncomfortable.   If we do talk about it we have to be so careful in selecting our words that talking about the subject is something like trying to walk through a mine field blindfolded.  Sometimes perfectly serviceable words are deemed in appropriate.   Anchor babies is a good example.  When you say it Everyone knows what it means...so if you are talking about persons (not citizens) who come to America and have children and you want to debate whether or not those children should be citizens if they are born here I don't see the issue with using the term.  Just me, probably someone will explain to me why it's offensive, but it seems like a perfectly descriptive phrase.  When I say it or hear it I don't think of it as a slur, just as a description that describes babies born here of parents who are not citizens.  It's probably a conversation we should be having...the subject of immigration I mean...whether it be legal or illegal, documented or not documented, yet we can't have said debate because just hearing the term throws a wrench in the gears of a discussion.

It's true, some ideas make some people uncomfortable, but ideas have always made some people uncomfortable.   The earth is round!  That idea once got people in trouble.   To expect College professors, to warn their students ahead of time if certain ideas and concepts are going to be mentioned in class is just about the craziest notion I've ever heard of.  Yet Trigger Warnings have become "a thing" at universities all over the country.    Of all the places where  freedom of thought should be encouraged you would think college would near the top of the list.  Students protest if a speaker is brought to the campus who has controversial ideas.

What have we done to our children and grandchildren?  We seem to have protected them for so long, from anything that might make them uncomfortable, that they can't even be in the same room with someone who might have an idea that offends them.  I wonder how that will work for them in the real world after graduation?     Yes, maybe "The Donald" is right,  Political Correctness as gone too far, though in his case a good strong muzzle or a dirty sock in his mouth might be just what is needed.

It's sad, political campaigns are supposed to be about ideas for solving the problems of the nation, instead we argue about HOW we should talk about certain subjects.   Instead of hearing discussions about immigration policy we hear a discussion about what words we can and can't use when, if, we ever get around to actually having that discussion.  It's rather like diplomats arguing about the shape of the table and the seating arrangement instead of getting down to the purpose of the meeting in the first place.

Two sides of the same coin.

Here's something to think about.  Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump....they would seem to be opposites and in many respects they are, but they are opposites like heads and tails of the same coin.  I call it the Anti-establishment coin.  They both represent the same thing...the same promise....simply, that they are not a part of the larger "political establishment". They are outsiders. Not part of the old guard.  They hold out the promise of being different than the rest of the Washington establishment.  They are both willing to say things and take positions others fear to take. Trump seems to revel in being the anti politically correct candidate and he doesn't seem to care what Washington insiders think of him (must less media pundits).    I believe he has the Washington establishment worried, although they continue to believe (or hope) he will eventually flame out.  There is a lot of irony in Donald Trump claiming to be the anti-establishment GOP candidate, considering he has admitted giving truck loads of cash to politicians of all stripes for the sole purpose of extracting "favors" from them. I guess it's like he is saying "I'm not one of them, but I've been smart enough, and rich enough to USE them" and I guess that probably annoys them as much as anything....that someone actually admits they give big political donations with the expectation of getting something in return.  That our government really is "for sale" The establishment, Right and Left,  would rather not talk about that.

For many Americans the financial crisis of 2008 and the resulting recession brought into sharp focus the failings of the "free market", and and the financial deregulation that fueled the crisis.  A sagging middle class, income inequality, within a system that seems designed for the 1% by the 1% have created a deep suspicion of so called "Corporate Democrats". Sanders, like Trump is not afraid to say what he thinks and champions himself as the only true friend of the middle class.  Like Trump worries the establishment Republicans, Bernie Sanders has the "establishment"  wing of his party worried. Sanders and Trump, Two sides of the same coin based on a deep distrust of the usual politicians, playing the usual games, and making the same hollow promises.  There are a lot of pissed off voters if the numbers supporting Trump or Sanders are any indication...and I believe they are. Maybe some folks are even beginning to understand that "trickle down" economics doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work.

I find it amazing that the "establishment" cartel in Washington seems so clueless about how unhappy the vast majority of voters are.  Hell, all you have to do is set up a Facebook page, accumulate a couple hundred "friends" and just watch the news feed.  It isn't rocket science, just open their eyes and look around.  Personally if I were them I'd be getting damn nervous.  

  Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone wrote this today, and I can't agree more.
 
 "Trump's followers are a gang of pissed-off nativists who are tired of being laughed at, belittled, dismissed, and told who to vote for. So it seems incredible that the Republican establishment thinks it's going to get rid of Trump by laughing at, belittling and dismissing him, and telling his voters who they should be picking."   

The current crew running the train seems to think the passengers will just keep riding quietly along doing what is asked, believing what is said, no questions asked. As one of those passengers, I hate to tell the crew...your days might be numbered. I'm enjoying watching the Republican establishment try to tear Trump down, it might back fire on them, but this much we know for sure.  The next few months will be very entertaining if nothing else.     

 

More of What this country needs!

Back in April of 2009 I wrote a piece about the need for us to slow down so we can actually see what is around us and get an appreciation for what America really looks like.   It started with the following thought.  Fellow Hoosier and Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall once said "What this country needs is a really good five cent cigar!" Today I'll add to the list of what this country needs. One of the things this country needs today is for everyone to just slow down.

Thomas Marshall from North Manchester, Indiana was a Democrat and the popular 27th Governor of Indiana.  While in office he proposed the passage of a new Progressive State Constitution and worked for other progressive era reforms.  At that time Indiana was an important "swing state" in national politics, much like Florida is today.  Because he had been a popular figure in Indiana politics he was chosen as Woodrow Wilson's Vice Presidential candidate and served from 1913-1921 as the 28th U. S. Vice President.  Sadly Marshall is most remembered because he failed to press the issue of succession after Wilson became incapacitated by two strokes in 1919.   Though he was urged to take over as "Acting President" during Wilson's illness he opted not to because at that time the process of determining when a president was "incapacitated" was not well defined and he feared a constitutional crisis if he acted incorrectly. So historians give him low marks....at least he didn't embarrass fellow Hoosiers like the most recent Hoosier Vice President, Dan Quayle.   But I digress.

We Americans value speed, getting things done fast, fast food, fast lanes on the highway, fast cars.  We lead fast paced lives.   What we need to do is decelerate, get out of the fast lane, and turn off the interstate at the first exit.  Life would seem so much less hectic and you'd be amazed at what you might see.

According to Google Maps it is 1,711 miles from my house to my son's house just outside of Tucson, Arizona.  With the exception of the first 25 miles and the last 8 miles of the trip it can all be made via Interstate Highway travel.  Interstates 74, 72, 55, 44, 40, 25, and 10.  Twenty five hours drive time.  I can vouch for that...you can make the trip in a couple of 14 or 15 hour marathon drive days.  I've even done that a couple of times, but that isn't the way I like to travel.  It isn't pleasant, and it probably isn't safe.  Probably more importantly there are a lot of interesting things to see over that 1,711 mile journey if you just slow down and get out of the fast lane.  Below are some of the things you might find if you get off the interstate and explore some back roads.

Waiting for Harvest
Beauty is where you find it, but you can't savor it from the fast lane.
Rural road, Tippecanoe County, Indiana

Ears to the Stars.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory Very Large Array
Off the beaten path west of Socoro, NM along Hwy 60

The Great Plains
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
Off the beaten path south of Council Grove, KA on Hwy 177

Wigwam Motel
Off the beaten path on Old Route 66, Holbrook AZ

On the bottom of Canyon de Chelly
Way off the beaten path outside of Chinle AZ
nearest highway US 191

Near Hanksville UT
Off the beaten path along Utah hwy 24

Dark Sky
If you get far enough off the beaten path the night sky puts on quite a show.
Off Utah Hwy 12 north west of Bryce Canyon.

Hard Times
Colfax County New Mexico.  Though Interstate 25 cuts through the county
north to south, just about every other road in the county could be considered
off the beaten path.

Somewhere north of Alamosa Colorado
along a local rural road way off the beaten path. 

Prairie Sentinel
Off the beaten trail in western Indiana

     

Irritating things at Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com is first and foremost a company doing business with a profit in mind.  They have not collected vast amounts of data and made it available for altruistic reasons...they've done that for the purpose of attracting customers.  They are not particular about what sort of customers they attract, as long as said customer has a valid credit card.  None of that makes their collection of data any less valuable but bear in mind that the trees people have created there were done by persons with all levels of research experience and knowledge of their ancestors.   Some of the trees you find at Ancestry are well documented and researched.   Information from those trees can help you build your own tree.   Some of the trees you find there contain no documentation or source material for the information posted and those trees can lead you down a blind alley in no time.  What I'm saying is that there is much to like at Ancestry.com, but also much to beware of.  I am not a family tree snob, I don't mind sharing information with others, in fact I encourage it.  I have a public tree at ancestry.com  and I have made it public knowing others can access it and use information I have uploaded to the tree, including source material, photographs and other data.  I honestly don't mind sharing, that's how I was able to grow my own tree, because people willingly shared information, photographs, and memories.

I should also say at the beginning of this rant that I understand some people using Ancestry.com are new to genealogy, and that they sometimes make mistakes that people with more experience learned to avoid a long time ago.   

All that said, it still drives me crazy when people lift information or pictures off my tree and use them on their own trees in a way that is incorrect or in a way that doesn't fit their tree at all.  Some people want to know if they have made a mistake and will correct information that they have incorrectly understood and or used, and some are not interested in making corrections at all.    

Here is just one example of things that make me crazy when I see them at Ancestry.   

The same or similar name mistake:

A member ( I hesitate to call her a family historian or genealogist, both of which imply she knows something about what she's doing) at Ancestry.com has a woman on her tree named Dortha E Jones with a birth date given as 8 Aug 1909.   She shows as proof a birth record for someone named Dorothy E. Quebbeman, born in Knox County Indiana with parents Wm and Atta (Hendricks) Quebbeman.    Yet on the tree she is showing parents for Dorotha Jones as being Walter E. Jones and Mary J. Jones.   That's where I come into the picture.   Mary J. Jones was Mary J. Robinson and she was a first cousin of my grandfather and they did have a daughter named Dorothy Fay Jones.     So.....who the hell is person on the birth certificate?  In trying to read between the lines of that tree I see she has Dortha married to Harley G. Jones. Is Dortha who married Harley the same as Dorothy Quebbeman?  Can't really tell by looking at her tree...I think so, maybe.
Some of that confusion would be eliminated if people would please use the maiden name of women when entering them on a tree...it's much less confusing for everyone involved.  I can't tell if the woman who married Harley G. Jones was actually Dorthey E. Quebbeman or someone named Dortha E. Jones.

Ancestry.com really should require or at least encourage maiden names be used if known for all females on all trees.  This example gets worse,  the tree owner has uploaded census records for the Walter E. Jones family which does include a daughter named Dorthy Fay Jones....and also census records for Dortha  after her marriage to Harley Jones.   It seems clear, based on census records that the Dortha who married Harley is not the same Dorothy Jones who was the daughter of Walter and Mary. What seems to have happened is the records for two different women of similar names have been blended, leaving anyone looking at the tree very confused.   It's a good example of one of those "same name" problems but by no means is this a rare mistake at Ancestry.   For some reason a lot of people building family trees can't get past the fact that it is not only possible, but probable that a lot of people have the same names and even the same or similar years of birth and death.  I've done a couple of Google searches on my own name, Quentin Robinson.......there are a lot of us and I used to think it was a somewhat unique name. Imagine how many Jane Smith's there have been!

Some time ago I found another Ancestry user taking a lot of my Robinson photographs and information from my tree and got kind of excited, thinking I had found a long lost cousin.   Then I started looking at her tree and her connection to my tree which was with someone named Sarah Robinson.   She had an ancestor named Sarah Robinson who was born in PA. who married Asa Sprague and died in 1837 Orleans County New York.    I had a Sarah Robinson on my tree born about the same time, but born in Ohio.    The Sarah on my tree was a daughter of Richard and Ann Mary Robinson and was married to William Wilson McLaughlin and she died in 1832 in Ohio at a fairly young age after giving birth to 4 children.  The other Ancestry user had "adopted" the Sarah on my tree as her own Sarah.   Well heck, the name is the same, it MUST BE the same person, right?    I contacted her and sent her the marriage record for Sarah and William W. McLaughlin, explained where that Sarah was born, and how I knew that information with source material...thinking she'd want to correct her tree, or maybe ask me for additional information.    WRONG...not interested in correcting her tree at all and she essentially told me to mind my own damn business and that even if her tree was wrong it wasn't hurting anything because no one cares, and no one looks at it anyhow and it is her tree, not my tree, who appointed me as the tree police,  and to leave her alone.  (I left out all the expletives she spiced it up with)  

I recently looked at her tree again a couple years later it has grown to well over 20,000 names.  I guess it's pretty easy to build a big tree when you just start lifting whole branches off other trees and just plugging them in wherever the hell you want on your own tree.   The woman had absolutely no concept why her use of my Sarah Robinson's family on her tree, showing a different husband, different kids, different death date and location might be of any concern at all to me.   Maybe what ticked her off  was the idea that if she had to give up Sarah's family off my tree then she'd loose a few hundred good names that went with Sarah  and I guess if you are going for numbers then that would be a hard hit. Maybe she couldn't face the fact that if she removed my Robinson's from her tree that would leave her with a dead end for her Sarah, or maybe she's just a crazy bat.    Quantity over quality....he (or she) who gets the most names on a tree wins.  What horse shit!!!   Sadly it appears the woman has accumulated a lot of other mistakes on her tree besides the wrong Robinson family attached to her Sarah.   What she, and maybe a lot of people don't understand is that the information they post on those trees is likely to be around for a very long time, and at some point some innocent newby is going to be looking at those trees and will have no idea how inaccurate they are.  Those inaccuracies will just be perpetuated long into the future.

Believe me...a lot of information gets copied from tree to tree to tree because people see something that looks like it MIGHT fit and just plug it in without any additional proof....and sometimes what gets copied is so absurd I think my elementary school age grandkids could probably catch it as wrong.   I've seen children listed on trees with birth dates that are years after the parent died....or at a date when the mother would have been 5 years old. (That would have been a newsworthy event I imagine)

Often locations of events like birth, death, or marriage don't make any sense either.  If a family was living in Ohio in 1830 why would anyone believe one of their children was born in Germany in 1835 when all the other children of the family were born in Ohio?   Another example of the "same name" issue.   The Ohio family had a son Benjamin, and a family in Germany also had a son Benjamin..."must be the same guy".  Doesn't it seem unlikely that a family living in Ohio in 1835, made up of a husband born in Maryland and a wife born in Virginia, having a dozen kids all born in Ohio have one child born in Germany?   Could that happen,  sure it could, is it likely, not on your life. Just because you know your great great grandfather was named Benjamin and that he was born in Germany and you find another family of the same surname with a son named Benjamin IT DOES NOT MEAN YOUR GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER AND THE OTHER ONE ARE THE SAME PERSON!

Here is another one that drives me nuts...my fourth great grandmother was Isabella Anderson Davisson.   Born in Virginia in 1756 and married there but she and her husband and children migrated to Ohio about 1810 where they settled in Clark County and bought a farm.   In 1818 and 1819 Isabella Davisson and her husband Isaac sell all their land in Clark County and she is not heard from again.

Isaac however is found soon after 1820 living in Johnson County Indiana where several of their children migrated about the time of the Ohio land sales.   There is no census record or any other type of record indicating Isabella was still around after the land sale in Ohio. There are at least 22 family trees at Ancestry.com and a few actually give an exact date of death for her, however most use an estimated  death date of 1819 or 1820.   Sometimes when arriving at a death date for early ancestors all you can do is estimate, but the craziest thing I find about her is that the majority of those 22 trees show her place of death as Indianola in Warren County Iowa.  Not Ohio, not Indiana.

Now think about that for a minute.   1820.....what was going on in Iowa in 1820?  I'll tell you what, not very damn much, that's what!  Indiana was at the western edge of the frontier in 1820.   What was going on with the rest of Isabella's family in 1820?   Where were they?   I'll tell you....not a one of them was in Iowa in 1820.  None.  Why would you think a woman of almost 70 years old would strike out and head west of the Mississippi in 1820 when her husband and all of her family was in either Ohio or Indiana?  Did she run away from home, abandon her husband and family?  If she did that then how did anyone back in Ohio and Indiana figure out that she made it as far as Indianola Iowa and how did anyone arrive at an exact date of death?   Maybe someone telegraphed them?  Maybe the health department in Indianola kept a record?   Yes, I'm being snarky.

    I once, as an experiment, contacted the owners of all 22 of those trees and asked them if they could provide any additional information about the death date or death location for Isabella Davisson...less than half even responded, but each of those ten  people told me that they got the death date and Indianola Iowa place of death from another tree...I shook my head, thanked them and went on my way.   In fairness, I have since that time corresponded with a few other Davisson descendants who have explained how they arrived at an estimated death date and location for Isabella...  based on the land sales and based on a lack of census or other proof from Indiana they believe she probably died around 1820 either in Clark County, before Isaac moved west into Indiana, or she died in Johnson County Indiana not long after they moved there. Sometimes that is just about as accurate as you can get or should get.

Changing gears a bit.  Below, selected at random, are a few of my favorite pictures from the family album.

My grandma taught school here.  Her dad, Edgar Ferguson standing by the hack. 

 The Painter family...my mother in law is the next to youngest child on left.
Can you imagine 16 siblings? 

Great Grandpa Robinson's house in White County Indiana. 

 Hotel in Plymouth Nebraska owned by great-great grand Uncle John D. Robinson. 

Home where I grew up....lots of memories there.  

  

They were all just people!

Whatever you do, don't start researching your family history unless you want to find out that your ancestors were just ordinary humans, with all the ordinary quirks, characteristics, and problems we have today.   It's pretty easy to think of "the good old days" as something better than today.  Lots of people fall into that trap. Longing for the days "before everything went to hell."  You see it all the time on Facebook, people posting things about how wonderful life was when they were kids. How we never had to lock our doors, played outside after dark without supervision, went  barefoot through the cow paddies all summer long, everyone watched Red Skelton and Lawrence Welk and we laid around in the grass watching the summer clouds drift past.   I know you've seen those things a thousand times.  We remember things were "better" in the old days, so if they were better in our own "old days" they must have been perfectly terrific when our great grandparents were kids.

We also have a tendency to put our ancestors on pedestals....thinking of them as somehow heroic and without fault. I've done it myself,  having had a great relationship with my grandparents it is easy to start thinking all the grandparents that came before them must have been equally warm, loving, and successful people just like the ones I remember, but the truth is not all of them were.  Not all of them were heroic, certainly some were, but some were just mean, bad apples without many positive personality traits.   Just look at the odds...there were a lot of them, ancestors I mean.  You double the number for each generation. Two parents, four grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and before you know it you are no longer talking about a family tree, but a family forest.  If you go back far enough you eventually come to a number that is larger than what the known population of the whole world was at that given point in time...What? How is that possible? What someone explained to me was that through time lots of siblings and cousins married one another,   and those couples had shared ancestors so you lose numbers in those cases.

But, getting back to how things were better in "the old days". Let me tell you something.   Life 50 years ago, or 150 years ago wasn't really all that different from today.  People had the same hopes, dreams, fears and faults we have today.   Women got pregnant before they got married, married couples got divorces,  people were alcoholics, or suffered from mental illness, some of them couldn't read or write and held menial jobs all their lives and people went to jail. Some declared bankruptcy, or lost their farms to foreclosure. Sometimes people killed one another.   An average family history is full of tragedy..the infant mortality rate was sky high compared to today...few families escaped the loss of at least one infant...and if they survived infancy they still had to make it through the rest of their childhood.    Things that are almost unheard of today...measles, mumps, dysentery, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, malaria, cholera, polio, diphtheria and smallpox took many young lives. Something as simple as ear infection or an infected splinter could kill you.

People don't expect to find out that great grandma's first baby was born 4 months after she was married, or that grandpa had a half brother he never knew about...or if he did he never told you that he knew.  We feel shocked and disappointed when we find out great great grandpa died in prison.  We are aghast to find out great grandpa's cousin murdered his wife and tried to commit suicide and that he spent the last years of his life in and out of mental hospitals or living on the street.

Some family historians take all these surprises with a grain of salt because they understand it's all a part of the big river of  life.  Sometimes they don't really want to discover what they did.  Recently I was working on the family of my great-great grandfather David Cooper.  I had a good list of his siblings and was gathering additional information about those siblings to record on my family tree.  I had started out with a listing of family information someone had made around 1900.  For most of David's siblings there was information about the spouses, and children, including dates of birth and death and where they lived, etc.  When I came to his brother Joseph Cooper the old family papers contained very little information about Joseph or about his family.  I wondered why all the other families of siblings had been so well documented, but not that one.

As I dug through census records, city directories, court records, cemetery records, etc. it didn't take me long to understand why Joseph was practically overlooked in the old family records...he was, without a doubt the black sheep of that family.   He worked at odd jobs when he worked at all, failed to support his family, then abandoned them, he was an abusive drunk to his family and was arrested by local police more than once for public drunkenness.  His children had to go to work as young teens to help support their mother.  His wife Mary finally filed for divorce...but then withdrew the complaint when it became clear that he was dying of stomach cancer.    At Ancestry.com I noticed that a woman who is a descendant of one of Joseph's daughters had a tree at Ancestry but had none of the Cooper family information on her tree beyond Joseph so I offered to help her since my information went two generations farther back in time than she knew.   She was thrilled when I provided the Cooper family information, we exchanged a few emails as I provided her information, but after I provided Joseph's own checkered history she suddenly lost interest and stopped responding to any of the items I sent.   Some folks just don't want to know anything negative about their ancestors.

My late Uncle Bob Shearer is another example of someone who felt personally ashamed by what happened to his great grandfather William Shearer (my great great grandfather).  He was so distressed by what he had discovered that he took all paperwork pertaining to that part of William Shearers life, piled it in the alley behind his house in Remington and set fire to it. That information was revealed to my  Uncle Max who had witnessed the mini bonfire and had been sworn to secrecy by his older brother.   (so much for family secret keeping)   Of course there had been rumors in the family for Uncle Bob's entire life...it was apparently not something that was spoken of very often but my mother knew William Shearer had died under some sort of mysterious circumstances.  In a way Uncle Bob was trying to close the door long after the horse had left the barn.

  Well, heck, I'm a curious person, so I started digging around on my own.  As it turned out it wasn't that difficult to figure out what happened to my great great grandfather...he died  in the Indiana Penitentiary at Jeffersonville, Indiana when the prison was hit by a cholera epidemic during the late summer of 1850.  He had been convicted in the early part of 1850.   When my uncle discovered that I knew the "secret" he made a special trip to my home where he practically begged me to forget what I knew and not talk about it to any other family members.   Uncle Bob is gone now and while he lived I didn't make use of what I had learned.  But it still seems like "a heck of a story".

 I would actually like to know a lot more about that whole story than I have been able to learn.  In 1850 it was a big story that got splashed around in a lot of newspapers all over Indiana and even several out of state papers covered the story, one story even gave an account of  his deathbed scene, written by a minister who had visited William Shearer and other prisoners at the Jeffersonville facility.

The conviction was in the Federal District Court in Indianapolis, the crime (robbery of the mail) allegedly occurred in Winchester where William and his family lived. Someone broke into the post office and stole some mail.  Empty envelopes were later found.  It was determined that one of the envelopes had contained a $3.00 bank note.  I went so far as to order copies of the Federal Court docket books covering that case but they gave no information about the crime at all.  No information on who testified, or what they said. Newspaper articles written shortly after his arrest, during his trial, and after his death claimed he was convicted on weak circumstantial evidence, only that the morning after the crime was discovered William had bought some medicine at the local drug store and had paid for it with a $3.00 bank note.    Now, here is the strange thing.  Based on the probate files after his death he was solvent, would not have needed to steal money.  He had been making his living as a teacher, surveyor, and attorney.  He had been elected to the position of County Surveyor.     But the story gets stranger.  After he was initially arrested the case was dropped by the federal prosecutor prior to the trial.  About a year later politics changed and a new federal prosecutor refiled the original charge against William and tried the case.  One has to wonder why the first prosecutor dropped charges....and why the second prosecutor decided to pursue the case anew?  On his deathbed in the prison William met with a minister and even knowing his death to be eminent he maintained he was innocent of the charge. His death due to cholera was one of about a score that died in the prison during that same time period.

A news story of his death reported that a petition was then in circulation throughout eastern Indiana, and had up to that time collected more than 2000 names requesting he be pardoned.  He died before that could be submitted.   I have never been able to come to a solid conclusion as to his guilt or innocence because so much information seems to be missing from the story.  Certainly it appears there was not much evidence against him, at least that which I've been able to dig up besides the fact he used a bank note of the same denomination as one reported stolen.  

I have shared this story with other descendants of William and will put much of this on my family tree at Ancestry.  It's one of those unexpected tragic stories that are part of life and such tragedies are not unique to my family.  I'm of the opinion that leaving this information out of the story of that family short changes those who come after me.  These are the things that show we are all human and all a part of of a larger story.

    

 

Dirty, Rotten Liberals, part 2

We have 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and 32 great great great grandparents.  Now that's a big roomful of interesting folks, and all with unique individual stories.     Those of us who have done much research of our family history have probably developed a fondness for one particular ancestor over the others at least that's been the case with me.   If there was any one ancestor I'd like to be able to go back in time and spend a day with it would be one of my great great great grandfathers, William Walter Robinson.  Bill Robinson was one of those dirty, rotten liberals I spoke of in my prior post.

William W. and Matilda Robinson circa 1847

He and his younger brother John Robinson were willing to take a stand against slavery during a time in our history when men (and women) like them were considered "radical".  Both men came to Tippecanoe County among the very earliest settlers.  William was born in eastern Pennsylvania in 1794, but came west as an infant with his family, first to Kentucky and then to Ohio where he grew up.  John was born in Clark County Ohio in 1806.

William was the oldest son in a family of six sons, and eight daughters.   He left Clark County within a year of his 1818 marriage in Clark County for the wilds of central Indiana. He moved into the area even before the government had finished surveying the land in preparation for sale.   He had begun his own family while still living in Clark County and by 1820 he had purchased government land in what later became Johnson County Indiana.  There he cleared his land, farmed, and became involved in local politics, being elected as one of the first members of the county Board of Justices.  The duties of the Boards of Justice were a sort of blend of what today would be the County Commissioners and a Justice of the Peace.   By 1830 he had moved his family north and west of the Wabash River into what was then the brand new Tippecanoe County where he settled down for the remainder of his life.  

Younger brother John married in Clark County Ohio in 1829 and soon joined his older brother in Tippecanoe County where he purchased farm land about a half mile from his brother's farm.  Several other siblings of William and John also arrived in Tippecanoe County around 1830, but within a decade they had all moved on...farther west and northwest. Youngest brother Lemuel eventually made it all the way to California.     The Robinson's were active in the early days of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  William and his wife were among the members of the first Methodist Church in Johnson County and William was one of the first Trustees of a Methodist congregation founded in their Tippecanoe County neighborhood in the 1840's.

In 1835 John was licensed to become a "local preacher" of the M. E. Church, a position he held for about eight years.   John left the M. E. Church and joined the Wesleyan Methodist soon after that group was formed in 1843 because the M. E. Church failed to take a strong stand against slavery. In addition to Anti-slavery, the early Wesleyan Methodists championed the rights of women.  In 1848 they hosted the first women's rights convention and later passed a resolution favoring the right of women to vote.  Both  anti-slavery and women's rights were far outside conventional (conservative) views at the time.

William never left the Methodist Episcopal fold, but was none-the-less involved in the anti-slavery movement, and was a champion of women's rights, and in particular a champion of education for his children, including his daughters.  

During the 1830's, abolitionists were often characterized as misfits and crackpots. Few took them seriously. Mobs, sometimes led by "gentlemen of property and standing" in the community, inflicted abuse and injury on abolitionists across the north. The violence culminated in Alton, IL in Noveber 1837 when abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed while defending his press from an unruly crowd. He was killed at the height of anti abolitionist sentiment and from that time forward there was a sharp drop in the number and intensity of mob violence, though it never entirely disappeared. Even in Lafayette mob violence was noted against known abolitionists. In 1845 a mob threatened to burn the house of Dr. Elizur Deming who was then a candidate for Governor on the Liberty Party Ticket and also that of Lewis Falley Sr. who was known to harbor runaway slaves in his home on South 5th Street. The mob was diverted from both of those places by the Sheriff and local militia but did burn the homes of several free blacks who lived near the river on the south side of town.

 In short, during the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, it was dangerous to be an abolitionist. William Robinson a friend of Dr. Deming was also a member of the Liberty Party of Indiana and his name appears in several local news items covering local Liberty Party events. It is not known if John was involved in Liberty Party politics but his pulpit gave him opportunity to preach against the sin of slavery. He was also remembered in his obituary as having been a participant in the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves escape to Canada. It is unknown if the two brothers worked together in those efforts but since their farms were side by side it seems likely that there was at least some mutual cooperation. Lewis Falley junior was interviewed in about 1900 and remembered  John Robinson often came to his father's home in Lafayette and picked up runaways hiding at the Falley home then taking them north to the county line. A map published in 1898 by Wilber Siebert in his history of the Underground Railroad was one that was sketched by Lewis Falley Senior and clearly shows the Robinson Farm as the first stop north of Lafayette.  

While being an abolitionist, or being a member of the Liberty Party were not against the law, assisting or hiding runaway slaves were certainly against the law, and could result in either criminal charges or civil suits brought by the "owners" of the fugitive slaves.  Many people, even among abolitionists, refused to help fugitive slaves because they either did not want to be law breakers, or they didn't see the Underground Railroad as a viable solution to the problem.  Clearly William and John Robinson were not afraid of upsetting the apple cart, they valued freedom, not just for themselves, but for all.  

William and Matilda were progressives who valued education for all of their children, not just their sons.   At a time when education beyond the very basic for women was not believed necessary they sent both daughters and sons away for higher education.  Two of their sons graduated from Indiana Asbury College, and became Methodist ministers and one became a college president.  At least one of their daughters graduated from Fort Wayne College where she was later a teacher but several of the other girls also attended Fort Wayne College for at least one term.   

Today William might be referred to as a liberal statist...  unlike Ronald Reagan, William W. Robinson didn't see the government as the problem, but instead as a way to solve problems. He saw government simply as neighbors working together toward a common goal.    He was active in community affairs, holding public office as a young man in Johnson County and working with local government officials in Tippecanoe County to build the new community. He signed petitions for improvements to roads and bridges, petitions against selling alcohol in his township, worked with his neighbors building and improving the local roads, paid taxes, paid his debts, raised a large family and worked his larger than average farm.  He sought to eliminate slavery through political action.   Liberty and individual freedom are our birthright, but truly wise men, such as William and John Robinson, know that along with liberty we also need a sense of community to thrive.  William and John Robinson would have found the philosophy of Ayn Rand describing selfishness is a virtue and her rejection of altruism to be quite foreign. 

John and William W. Robinson understood what Ayn Rand failed so miserably to understand.   While she believed that the pursuit of one's own rational self-interest is  life's moral purpose, the true fact is that man evolved as a communal creature, with bonds to family and community tightly tied to health, happiness, longevity and pretty much everything that makes life pleasurable. 

Bringing a load of hay from the farm to town along the old plank road.  John Robinson used these trips into Lafayette as cover when picking up fugitive slaves for transport north toward Jasper County where they would be handed off to yet another "conductor" along the Underground Railroad.  

Dirty Rotten Liberals!

I lament the loss of perfectly good words, but the truth is that language evolves. The word liberal has ancient Latin and Greek roots and has changed meanings more than once. In the 12th century it referred to noble, gracious, munificent, and generous but by the 15th century there was also a connotation of free, unrestrained, unimpeded, libertine or licentious. Through the 16th and 17th centuries it was used to describe someone free from restraint in speech or action and was a word of reproach. By around 1776 the word was revived in a positive sense during the Enlightenment taking on the meaning of one free of prejudice and tolerant.

Today the word can be a noun or an adjective and has retained the more positive aspects it came to represent during the Enlightenment. Tolerant, broad-minded, generous, favoring reform and progress, not bound by tradition. It can also mean big or large as in a liberal helping of dessert, or someone who was liberal (generous) in their donation to charity. If you're from southwestern Kansas Liberal could be the name of the town where you live. If you are a Tea Party Congressman it's a handy expletive for everything that's gone wrong with the country.

A while back Galanty Miller posted a humor column at the Huffington Post describing a long list of differences between conservatives and liberals. Some of them were pretty funny. Funny enough that I'll risk using a few of them without his express written permission.

Liberals are concerned about economic inequality. Conservatives are confident that one day they will be rich.
Conservatives don't want to hear liberal Hollywood celebrities talk about politics. Liberals also don't want to hear liberal Hollywood celebrities talk about politics.

Liberals support good teachers. Conservatives support eliminating bad teachers.

Conservatives support free speech. Liberals support free speech unless it's politically incorrect.

Liberals love having sex. Conservatives hate when other people have sex.

Conservatives support issues that help their families. Liberals support issues that help families.

Liberals are full of crap because they don't really believe what they say. Conservatives are full of crap because they truly believe what they say.

I suppose this is a good time to bring up the purpose of this edition. I have finally been able to admit it, it took a while, but I'm coming out, Yes, I'm a liberal. I'm not sure how long I've been a liberal, maybe longer than I know. I started out voting for Republicans. I guess it was sort of expected of me.  For more than 30 years I was pretty faithful to the GOP. I was raised in a middle class family, my parents were Republicans, my grandparents were Republicans. I was a police officer, a profession where most of my colleagues were Republicans...even those few who always supported the local Democrats were conservative. I first thought of myself as "moderate". I really didn't want to be called a liberal. Geez, after all a liberal is practically a communist.

But a funny thing happened...the Republican Party moved to the right. I shuffled along with them for a while but by the time George W. Bush came along I felt pretty out of place and by the end of his first term I knew. I was a liberal. Holy Crap! A dirty, rotten liberal. Me? What would my family think? It took me a while to become comfortable wearing that label. So why am I now happy to say I'm a Liberal?
I think I have both specific policy reasons and general philosophic reasons for my political views and I think it's a good idea to be able to state what those are...if you can't then you shouldn't be voting.

1. I believe in science.
2. I believe corporations are businesses, not people.
3. I believe our sexual orientation is something we are born with, not something we choose.
4. I believe in global warming and that humans have had a hand in it (see number one above)
5. I believe women deserve equal rights and equal pay.
6. I don't believe 47% of Americans are looking for a government handout.
7. I don't believe God uses weather to punish sin. (see number one again)
8. I don't believe we are "entitled" to social security and Medicare, we paid for these programs.
9. I believe demand creates jobs, not tax cuts.
10. I believe our constitution doesn't only protect the rights I agree with...sometimes it also protects the rights       I don't agree with.
11. I believe we should protect the weakest among us, not the richest.
12. I believe we should put people before profits.
13. I'm a liberal because I believe in a Constitution that is meant to evolve, grow, and progress.
14. I believe in a free market, with rules.

Speaking of Social security here are what a lot of Republicans in Congress were saying while FDR was trying to get it passed.

“Never in the history of the world has any measure been so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.”
“…Invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as…to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the head of our descendants.”
“…Sooner or later will bring the abandonment of private capitalism.”

Of course none of those things happened but it's always the same story from those who most loudly belittle liberal ideas and fight any and all progressive change...."it will ruin the country", "the sky is falling", "death panels", "squawk, squawk, squawk!"

Even with all the name calling between the right and the left in America today,  it remains clear that all of us really want the same things for our family, for ourselves, and for our country.  What we can't agree on is the best way to get there, nor can we agree even on how we got here.   While my own political beliefs would seem to have sprung from some very conservative ground I can point to at least one ancestor who would, by all known standards, have been thought of as radically liberal in his day.  So radical that he and his brother might have gone to jail had the full nature of their activities been known.

Mom's Purse

Did you ever notice how you can sometimes get a whiff of something in the air and right away it reminds you of something or someone, or someplace?  A lot of my childhood memories seem to be tied to my olfactory senses.    Usually when I have one of those olfactory moments it's quick and intense with a vision flashing through my head and then quickly fading again.  Memories of visiting my grandmother's home, how her kitchen smelled in the winter as she was cooking grandpa's breakfast or making herself a cup of tea.  Visions of my dad shaving in front of the bathroom mirror which he always finished with a splash of Old Spice, or memories of my mother taking a tissue from her purse, spitting on it and wiping dirt off my face.

Mom's purse had a unique odor which I can't describe.  I suppose it was a mix of make up, lipstick, those used tissues, a pack of wintergreen chewing gum and lord knows what else.  Even though I can't put the scent into words, I'd know it if I ever smelled it again...and I have a few times.   I think the inside of her purse was a lot like my grandma's, but my grandma's always had a sort of overriding aroma of peppermint from the roll of Tums she usually had in it.    Mostly, the contents of a woman's purse remain a mystery to me...even after 66 years of life and 45 years of marriage.

Having your face wiped with a spitty Kleenex sounds pretty gross, and I suppose it is (and was), but at the time it was just something my sisters and I endured.  Most often that impromptu clean up  happened in the car.  Hmmm?  I wonder if that is where the phrase "spit bath" originated?

The vision of mom reaching over the top of the front seat in the car and making last minute corrections to our hair  or making sure our faces were clear of any "spots" was just something that happened...it wasn't a surprise, it was expected and had we objected there wasn't any way to get away from her anyhow.  For such a short woman she seemed to have an infinitely long arms when it came to reaching into the back seat, whether she were reaching back to tidy us up before we got out, or needed to swat one of us.

When I learned to talk my grandmother Robinson was Meme to me and she retained that title through all of the following 23 grandkids.   Meme's house was special and always full of smells and those odors still bring back memories of being there.  There was a winter smell, and a summer smell...they were similar, but not quite the same.  Meme didn't need scented candles that smell like baked cookies, or fruit...she got the effect naturally.  Baking cookies and making jam.   Besides all the good food aromas that went through the house there was something else, not sure what....maybe just a "lived in" smell.

Winter was something different.  There were still all those food smells but the old oil furnace in the basement added a sort of earthy undertone.  When I was still a small child there was one big heat register in the floor that sent warm air up into the living room, where it spread out from there.   It was nice to lay on the floor next to that big register in the floor and soak up some heat on a cold day.   Sometime later they had a blower attached to the furnace and some ducts put in and closed off that giant register...maybe they put in a new furnace, I'm not really sure.  For humidity in the winter Meme set an ice cube tray full of water in front of a couple of the registers and refilled regularly.   They had really hard water so the trays were always covered with heavy lime deposits after a few weeks of use.

You were often engulfed in the aroma of frying bacon waking up in the morning at Meme's.  Toast was always a breakfast staple at their house...toast with butter and some of her jam...and those jams were always a sort of mystery...she used fruit that was available and often combined them. Things like Strawberry-rhubarb,  or Mulberry and rhubarb.  It was at Meme's house that I first tasted sassafras tea and it was made from roots she dug herself under a small sassafras tree that grew in a fence row south of the house. A small spade and an old butcher knife was all she needed.  I suppose I could still walk to the spot where that little tree grew, but sadly, that fence row is long gone.  In fact most fence rows in the Midwest are gone, victims of industrialized farming. Fence rows use space that is more valuable for crops, and removing them makes use of giant equipment easier.

My grand kids won't even understand the concept of a fence row or realize what has been lost.  Fence rows contained such a variety of wild plants... wild grapes, the occasional tree, grass of course, milkweed and other wild flowers of every variety, poison ivy and they sheltered lots of wildlife of the smaller variety.  Rabbits, quail, pheasants, song birds, field mice.  In the winter they caught the blowing snow which piled into great drifts along the fence rows.    There were a lot of fence rows then,  an 80 acre plot might have been broken down in as many as 3, 4, or even 5 separate fields, some connected by small grass covered lanes...today that same 80 acre plot is often combined with another 80 acre plot to make one large field with no fence rows to be seen anywhere around.

 



 

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy!

Today is July 3rd and the 59th birthday of my cousin, Jeff Robinson.  I've got more than 30 first cousins and his is the only one I usually remember.   That's because his mom, my Aunt Jo, started having parties for him when he was about 3 and always invited all the cousins.  He was 6 years younger than me but his brother was closer to my age and as cousins go he and I were probably closer during childhood than any of the other cousins.  Being the oldest cousin on that side of the family had a certain amount of "cousin prestige", but on the other hand there were a lot of younger kids and thus fewer that I wanted to play with.     The parties were memorable.  Weather permitting we always had a cookout and it was always hot dogs and then she usually took us to the pool at Columbian Park in Lafayette.  What a great pool that was.  His birthday was sort of the opening act of our Independence Day celebrations, at least for us kids.  Happy Birthday Jeff.  

Since my dad and his brothers farmed together they didn't necessarily get a "day off".  There are not really any "holidays" on the farm. The work gets done when it needs to be done, regardless of the day.    However I do remember the first time and place I ever saw fireworks on the 4th of July and that was in the front pasture in front of my grandparent's home.   Uncle Kean had been somewhere out of state and brought a carload of big rockets back home.  In those days fireworks were not legal to be sold in Indiana but you could get them in Tennessee and Missouri and possibly some other nearby states.

A bunch of us cousins were set down on blankets in the front yard and waited anxiously for the show to begin and of course we were forbidden to leave the yard, or even get too close to the fence that divided the yard and front pasture.  I've seen lots of fireworks shows since then, and most of them were much more elaborate and consisted of many more shells, but I don't suppose any matched the anticipation and excitement of those 4th's in my grandparent's front yard. It was dark enough to set off the fireworks when the lightning bugs could be seen.   I don't remember how many years we had those shows...I don't think it was very many.   We lived about 12 miles north of Lafayette, the nearest town that always had big fireworks displays.  Monticello and Wolcott also have a long history of fireworks shows but we couldn't see them from our house...but the ones in Lafayette we could see from our house.  Not well, and we often climbed up on the barn roof for a better view, but we could see the larger bursts.  Sometimes dad loaded us all in the car and drove somewhere where we could get a better view...not close, but better than from 12 miles away.

The most memorable fireworks show I've seen as an adult was the one we took our three kids to on the Mall in Washington DC.  We sat on the grass not far from the Washington Monument which put us pretty close to the action, although we were too far from any of the music venues to enjoy that part of the program. It's hard to forget the experience, especially the experience of exiting the Mall with about a million other people after the show.

Here in Lafayette we have a good fireworks show at least a couple of times a year.  On the 4th, and usually at least one of the downtown festivals ends with fireworks.  My most enjoyable local shows have always been the Lafayette Symphony program when they held the 4th of July concert on Slater Hill at Purdue.  Their final number was always the 1812 Overture featuring real canon fire and ended with the Fireworks.  That one always made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

 

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back!

Well, I confirmed and relearned the lesson that posting anything on Facebook other than some bland comment about the weather, or the cute thing your grandchild or your cat did or where you ate dinner, is likely to cause a shit-storm. So....the mistake I made was a comment about my favorite line from a news event over the past week and my thoughts on it.

Probably a good thing I didn't bring up what I thought of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's dissents in two different cases this past week in which the liberal wing of the court won out over the conservative wing.

Had Justice Scalia simply stated his legal reasoning for his dissent it wouldn't have caught my attention but Justice  Scalia went far beyond a simple dissent opinion, slamming the majority with zingers that bordered on personal attacks.   There are few Supreme court cases that end with unanimous decisions...there is almost always a majority opinion and and minority opinion...but what we usually get, or what we have historically gotten and what we should always hope to get from both sides is some semblance of respect and decorum.  Scalia's unhinged attacks on his colleagues smack of partisan politics, not judicious reasoning.

I take special exception to these words from his dissent and I'm calling him out as a common hypocrite.   "A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy."      Scalia seems to have no such opinion when his views fall within the majority opinion on a case.  Just to make this clear, I am not being critical of the fact that Justice Scalia had a different opinion than the majority of the justices but for the tone of his dissent and the blatant hypocrisy slamming our system because it didn't go his way.

I suppose I should cut the man a break...he lost two big ones this past week and he will never leave us in doubt about what his views might be. There is that much.

What got me into Facebook trouble specifically was quoting the following from Jim Wright's blog concerning the broughaha over the Confederate Battle flag.   "The Confederate Battle Flag, that stinking banner of treasonous bigotry".  I followed the quote with a statement that I thought that at the very least that those who fought under it were prime examples of the definition of treason as described in the U. S. Constitution.   There isn't really a lot of argument about the definition of the word treason....although it does get thrown around a lot these days at politicians and others for actions that really don't fit the definition of the crime.

Most definitions of "treason" include the following, "the betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it."     I'm just not really sure how you could argue that the officials and armies of the Confederate States of America were not guilty of treason.

I might as well have hit a hornets nest with a stick...   and yet not a single respondent to my post actually addressed the treason part of the post....first I was informed that both sides thought they were right, which is true....but is it any less Treason because they thought they were "right"?    Then I was reminded that our Founding fathers were also guilty of Treason....which again is true, but again doesn't address the issue of the flag being a symbol of treason,  then I was told the use of the word treason in talking about the Civil War is just semantics....and of course then they bring "states rights" into the discussion and finally I was instructed that the flag everyone is yelling about was not the flag of the CSA but was a military battle flag  ( I thought I had made that clear when I called it the Confederate Battle Flag)  and that just because one idiot waves it around doesn't mean everyone should go crazy over it....and now I'm feeling just sort of swamped....and then it was pointed out that if you wanted to talk about evil people in history "what about Columbus",  The news media won't let it go, etc, etc, etc.  I did agree that the media has way too much air time on their hands and as a result they do tend of obsess on some topics just to fill air time.  In fact I even used the term broughaha in my opening statement to indicate I thought the story was getting more attention than it probably deserves....but that was overlooked.    I decided it was best to just let the whole thread die of natural causes because it was clear I wasn't going to get any clear headed discussion on my initial, narrow comment linking that flag and the word "treason".      

Obviously the Confederate Battle flag is a symbol that represents a lot of different things to a lot of different people... some see it as a symbol of oppression and racial bigotry, some see it as a symbol of Southern pride and tradition and don't associate it with the negative qualities seen by others.  I think a lot of those views were influenced by where you were raised, where you went to school, and who your ancestors were.  I was born and raised in the Midwest, far above the Mason-Dixon line, my ancestors were almost all Yankees...My view of the Civil War were directly influenced by my ancestors who enlisted in the Union Army and went south to keep the Union together and to end slavery, but mainly they joined up because their government called them to do so.   The Blue were the good guys, the Gray were the bad guys.  That's just how I learned history.  Of course the truth is much more complex than that and not nearly so clear cut and of course history is always written by the winners.   Certainly none of us should be held responsible for the sins of our forefathers, but I think we do need to be honest with ourselves and admit that our ancestors were sometimes guilty of some pretty terrible examples of human behavior, i.e., Christopher Columbus and the entire sad history of how Native Americans have been treated since Europeans set foot in North and South America.

Certainly the men pictured below would have had no difficulty in associating the Confederate Battle Flag and the word treason.  I rest my case.

Robert Shearer

Benjamin Rush Moffitt

John Klepinger

John D. Robinson

Jesse W. Robinson

George Carter

Rev. John Robinson