(BTW, my ancestor, Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, one of the founders of New Sweden, is buried at that church).
Posted on 01/22/2007 2:38:46 PM PST by mcg2000
Hanson was not President of the United Staes, he was the president of Congress, I believe.
John Hanson was a SWEDE! He was descended from those who settled the New Sweden colony in the the Philadephia area--as am I! We Swedish-Americans are proud of John Hanson.
ping
Damned herring shuckers. ;~)
What a great bar bet.
Does not support the "First President" position...and provides some explanation as to where the story may have come from.
Who would've guessed James Baker has 15-20% African blood??
John Hancock was also an early President. An indication of how minor the position was, is this: Hancock was too ill to go from Boston to the Capitol, then in New York, for the entire year of his term. So, he didn't go, and the government functioned just fine in his absence.
Congressman Billybob
This is trash--do some research. From wiki:
MYTH-- Hanson was black
Dick Gregory, comedian and black activist publishes an on-line column called Global Watch. In one of his columns he repeated most of the myths and added a new one, that John Hanson was the descendent of a slave. (The column can be seen at [2].)
There are two possible origins for this belief. The first is that Hanson's grandfather, another John Hanson, was an early immigrant to Maryland; as was common at the time, he worked as an indentured servant on his arrival in the New World. In 1661, his first master, William Plumley, sold his contract to Edward Keene and recorded the contract with the court of Calvert County, Maryland; similar court records were also used to transfer title to land and slaves. But, in six years, the immigrant John had worked his way out of debt, and a few years afterwards had purchased his own small farm. There is no record that the grandfather was black, but if indentured servitude was confused with chattel slavery, it is easy to see where this belief would have appeared.
Another may be a simple case of confusion with Senator John Hanson, a politician from Liberia, who was involved with the resettlement of freed slaves in that country. Whilst this Hanson was indeed black, he also lived a hundred years too late.
Note: During the 1600s, blacks were in the USA as indentured servants. The law for chattel slavery didn't come completely into effect until around 1705. Looking at Hanson's picture, he has the appearance of the triads (Wesorts and others) that inhabited Southern Maryland. The black men that were initially there under indentured servitude inter-married with white women and bore children, until a law was passed making their union illegal.
OK, for the sake of argument, I'll concede that Hanson was the "first black president." Who are the other six?
Thanks for the ping...this is an urban legend. See above.
(BTW, my ancestor, Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, one of the founders of New Sweden, is buried at that church).
He was President of the Continental Congress, and the third president at that. No BFD...
What is really scary are some of the comments at that blog.
yet another myth based on nothing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanson_%28myths%29#Hanson_was_black
maybe he's related to this guy who hold the world record
fastest checkout from the Hyatt Regency ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1770846/posts
so are you related to john rambo?
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