The tale is told of Dave Randall, who was once the Customer Relations Expert for Scribner’s Rare Book Department. Randall had tried relentlessly to obtain one of an old collector’s thirteen copies of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. The owner stubbornly refused to let go of a single copy. He refused every overture attempted by Dave.
One Friday this owner called Dave Randall and said he had changed his mind. He was now ready to sell. It seemed to just come out of the blue.
The story is told of how the Liberty Bell sounded on July 4, 1776, to celebrate the signing and announcement of the Declaration of Independence. However, no announcement was made on that date, so no celebration or bell ringing was held to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
That myth, or old folk tale, was started by an article printed in 1847, in a book titled “Washington and His Generals: or Legends of the American Revolution”, by George Lippard, a Philadelphia journalist. It is now apparent that Mr. Lippard concocted the whole story of the bell’s involvement in the Revolution. He therefore forged one of the greatest mythical symbols of the Freedom of America.
I just finished making a freezer of home made lemon cream sherbet for our family get-together on Memorial Day. You see, it’s become somewhat of a tradition to have our family over to remember this holiday, and at that time have some good eats, like a bar-b-que, salad, and, of course home made ice cream.
The grandchildren who were here just had to see if the ice cream turned out OK, so we all had a little bowl to check it out. It was fantastic!
It got me to thinking of who we had to thank for bringing ice cream recipes to the United States. Do you know who it was?
Betsy Ross was a recent widow, and she was a poor, struggling seamstress when the story goes, she was approach by a team, including General George Washington to create a new flag for the hope of a new nation. It was apparently a secret meeting. General Washington asked her for help in the preparation of a brand new flag, and a new concept for a struggling nation.
Some historians doubt the story at least a little. Why? Because a man named Francis Hopkinson asked to be credited and paid for the production of the new flag. Who was Hopkinson? He was an author and a delegate to the Continental Congress from New Jersey. He asked to be paid for ‘his creation’. He actually wrote a letter to the Continental Board of Admiralty for a reward of two casks of wine for several patriotic designs he had created during the previous three years.
Thomas Jefferson should truly be remembered and honored today. What did he accomplish? I’ll just mention a few here. He graduated from William and Mary College and then studied law for 5 years under George Wythe, the first law professor in Virginia.
By then he was already an accomplished violinist and dancer. He fell in love with and married another musician, Martha Wayles Skelton. He had already begun construction on Montecello, so they moved in to the one room that was finished there. He worked on building and remodeling for the next 40 years. (If you haven’t been there, you should go to visit and to observe the detail and the beauty of his mansion on the hill.
Benjamin Franklin will be the first to admit that he made mistakes. Plenty of them. However, there appear to be at least 3 mistakes he never made. He tells us about those.
Franklin never accepted the current situation to be unchangeable. He thought he could change things for the better, and he looked for ways to do it. If something wasn’t quite right he would rack his mind, or work on whatever the conditions were until he could find a solution. A good example of this is when his brother suffered from kidney stones, he developed America’s first urinary catheter to ease the problem.
The Founding Fathers were patriots. The root word of ‘founding’ is ‘found’, which means to “take the first steps in building”. The first builders of the nation. The use of the word ‘father’ in this sense means originator. They began the whole thing.
In this context, a father is one who has become one of the leading men as of a country. Just like a man is a father to a boy. The originator, the starter, the one who sees it through.
The way we use these words together today refers to the men who were there at the beginning of our new nation. The ones who originated or started the process of building a new nation. Nation means a politically organized community.
We discussed the War of 1812 just a few blogs ago. This was sometimes referred to as Madison’s war. It occurred during Madison’s second term as President, and the U.S. won, again. We later adopted the Star Spangled Banner as our national anthym. I hope you enjoyed the information.
Also during Madison’s second term a new word emerged in our vocabulary. Elbridge Gerry was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and was Madison’s Vice President. Gerry helped Congress redistrict, or carve up the voting districts of a State to help insure the proper candidate would be elected. His opponents all complained. They pointed out that the new districts weren’t symmetrical. They had the shapes of slithering salamanders. Yuck!
I know it’s a little bit early yet, but Easter is fast approaching. I have sometimes been asked why I have written my books on totally different subjects. Well, the short answer is my background is in law, therefore the Trial of Jesus Christ became a very real matter of interest to me.
I lived outside of the country for a while which imbued in me a spirit of patriotism. Then when I attended a conference in Philadelphia, in 1976, the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence my interest in the Founding Fathers grew by leaps and bounds. I gave many presentations about my heroes, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and James Madison, to the point where people in my audiences began to ask for me to write a book. So I did.
John Adams doesn’t get the honor and acclaim he deserves! Even in his lifetime he saw this coming. He said:
“The History of our Revolution will be one continued Lye from one end to the other. . . . The essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical Rod, smote the Earth and out sprung General Washington. . . .That Franklin electrified him with his rod—and thence forward these two conducted all the Policy, Negotiations, Legislatures and War . . . . Mausoleums, Statues, Monuments will never be erected for me, . . . .nor flattering orations spoken to transmit me to Posterity in brilliant Colours.”