25 years later both sides of my family came out of England to the Jamestown colony. They did not stay but traveled up the Chesapeake to World’s End where they settled, presumably peacefully. 400 years later their descendents remain in the same area, The Parks and the Foxwells, original settlers, not immigrants. These were people with nothing except passage for the trip who came to dig a home out of the earth and scrape a living from the sea and soil just as the Indians did a millenium before.
Hard times? They were not simply hard times. They were impossible times when going to a strange and dangerous land with nothing was preferable to staying and dying young and hungry.
We do not have any records from these people. They left no diaries, no paintings, only the earth where they settled. I have visited their graves, some from the 1700s and walked through one of their homesteads from the same time. These are my roots.
My people were here before any government, before, even, towns and farms. My ancestors brought civilization to this land. We welcomed the immigrants who came later. We lived beside the Indians, building villages together. We fished the same waters and farmed the same land.
There was not so much romance about these lives as there was the breath of freedom from oppression by domineering governments and landownders who stole every penny they could find. It was worth living with neighbors who could turn murderous, but almost never did. It was worth it to eat one’s own food and build one’s own home. Later it would get bad again.
Today it is worse than where we came from. We are robbed, dominated, murdered, lied to, and cheated every day of our miserable lives. So we elected ourselves a warrior and have charged him with killing the beast that devours. And we have promised him he is not alone. We stand with him shoulder to shoulder.
Together we will destroy the beast or be destroyed. We will not submit. We did not come here to submit. This is our land and, by God, we intend to keep it.
Hear, hear!
Good to know You, Louis.
Keep Your Powder Dry!
see #15
My family history sounds very much like yours. Except for staying in the original area where they landed. My ancestors moved west, every other generation moved, by horse, wagon, on foot. Until they ended up inTexas in the early 1800’s . We have stayed here ever since.
Well said.
Amen!
At best we are assured of a dirty civil war, “Rwanda X Bosnia.”
My ancestors were in Jamestowne at the time, having arrived in 1607, or 08. They lived short, and hard, lives.