Thursday, July 4, 2019

HAPPY NO-TRUMP INDEPENDENCE DAY!

Today is not about the megalomania of Donald Trump.

It's about my great-great-great-great Grandfather Reuben and his Grandfather Samuel.

Samuel Sherman lived on a farm in Lisbon, New Hampshire, and served as a private in Captain Caleb Whitings Company during the American Revolution. He marched on the alarm of 19 Apr 1775 to Roxbury.

At that time the country was a wilderness. Bears and other wild animals undisputedly held the territory.

There was a great scarcity of provisions among the settlers. Samuel’s grandson Reuben, then a lad of sixteen, traveled to Barnet, VT through the wilderness, and procured three pecks of flour, without the sign of a road or anything to guide him.

When he arrived almost in sight of home, his dog met him and barked vigorously at some object in a tall pine, which he discovered to be a bear. Crying lustily, he was heard by his mother, and ordered their family musket, which was without a lock, with ammunition and a firebrand.

The boy held the gun while his brother touched it off with the firebrand and killed the bear. The body lodged in a fork of the tree, which obliged them to cut it down. The meat furnished by the bear was a Godsend, and saved the family, with the flour which the boy had carried ten miles on his shoulder, from starvation. 

Happy Fourth of July, America.