How a Historical Past Reveals What Happens Today
Washington Crossing the Delaware
How a Historical Past Reveals What Happens Today
You have doubtless heard the expression that “nothing is new under the sun?” Understanding today involves knowing yesterday. The modern age has suffered a re-writing of school history books. This is unfortunate, because the writers were not present at the events, nor alive. That means that the modern version of the past is “opinion” or “propaganda”. That leaves the task to us of teaching historical subjects to our children. But this easy for genealogists who researches every detail of the ancestor’s lifestyle and the surrounding events, such as immigration and wars. He reads pensions from the Civil War and Revolutionary War, and learns of the movement of troops and details of battle. He appreciates that muskets, sabres and rifles were used to defend the families during war and against the Indians at frontier forts. He follows the ancestors as they took up land grants, drew in the land lotteries, land bounties to settle mountain lands, the movement westward and battles with Indians. He reads civil war diaries and the diaries of white women taken as Indian slaves in the Allegheny Mountains and dragged into villages further westward. And, as the history of each family is discovered, the genealogist shares the factual information with others. More of these stories need to be passed along in families. Lest we forget!
