Land of Light

Another Note Card Party in the can. Thank you so much for making it fun and for being a good visitor who leaves comments and for sharing your talent and beautiful photographs with us! The next Note Card Party will be December 18.

My love for Pilgrims was fostered early in a first grade classroom by Mrs. Pulsifer. She is the very one who taught me Psalm 23 and The Lord's Prayer. She also loved Thanksgiving and so things really began to pick up once November rolled around.

Perhaps she had ancestors who arrived on The Mayflower; perhaps she was a Daughter of the American Revolution as well. Whatever, she could surely tell some stories.

It takes things awhile to come full circle around here. I could let today's particular closure go without discussing it, if I weren't writing this here blog for the benefit of my family. (Hahahahahaha...I do crack myself up. Actually, quite to the contrary, I had a family ban on reading my blog for years. When they did read it, they tiptoed in and tiptoed out. Sometimes I caught them; most of the time I didn't.) 
It was way back on a post written in November 2007 that I pondered what painting hung on the back wall of my first grade classroom. I had not remembered correctly at that time — close, but not quite right; however, when I saw it recently, I recognized it immediately!

~Too Near the War-Path by George H. Boughton~

Yup. Something like that portrait will stay with you! It certainly has for me. It hung on the back wall of the classroom above the piano. I think of it as being a large, framed print. I would never have been able to guess that my ancestors had such experiences as this young couple portrayed in this painting of being too close to the War Path. 
While wandering the genealogy paths that I have recently found, I learned some interesting, even shocking, things. This list starts slowly and gains speed ☺:
1. First of all, my grandmother's maternal grandfather's parents were second cousins so this becomes a double line.
2. My three times great-grandfather (Hezekiah) was a Civil War veteran.
3. My five times great-grandfather (Joshua) was a Revolutionary War veteran.
4. My first ancestor in that line came to this country in 1635 — that's not much later than the Pilgrims. He was my eight times great-grandfather (George).
5. George had many children. One daughter, a mid-wife, was caring for a multiple great-grandmother of Jill's(Jill's World of Research, Reaction and Millinery)when the unthinkable happened.(I find it fascinating that here Jill and I have been hanging out together in Blogdom for some years now and our ancestors were hanging out together way back in 1697. Good thing I remembered Jill's story!) 
Jill has told the remarkable, even controversial, story of her ancestor (and mine) on her blog. If you ever need a good great fascinating read, I point you to it *here to get started* (though she wove an incredible tale beginning somewhere early in March of 2007...she is a research librarian after all) and *here in some final musings*. Jill tells the story with compassion and love. I am not equal to that task and so I am very glad that Jill has already done it. Edited to Add: Jill actually has a very handy label in her sidebar that pulls all her posts on this subject together chronologically. It's called Dustin Family Saga. 
I find myself astonished that, as a New Englander, I have roots that go back nearly to the beginning of American history. (You may remember my describing my investigation into my family history as if my family must have crawled out from under a rock because I could find so little. If you are searching, keep searching from time to time. New information is being added to the web all the time.) If you have lived in an area all your life and your family is tucked all around you, you may discover roots that go way back, too.   Now I know that the Bible specifically teaches (1 Timothy 1:4) that genealogy is not something to spend much time pondering and I believe that. Genealogy is not an important thing, though I could make a case that not only does math prove God, genealogy does, too, because genealogy is so very mathematical. Eventually, we're all going back to you know who in The Garden of Eden. I kid you not. Do the math!
I well remember my uncle telling me, after his taking many genealogy classes about twenty-five years ago, that 16 generations back everyone on earth is related. When I told him the Garden of Eden bit, he blinked hard several times. He found that a titch more difficult to comprehend.
I have more to say about this adventure into the family archives, though I'll save it for another time, probably writing on a Saturday when no one is around to read.☺
Today, I want to close with a testimony my five times Great-Grandfather Joshua's mother Ruth (six times great-grandmother) gave. She lived in perilous times before the country had even been established. Abenaki Indians had been responsible for the horrific deaths of her parents in a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts in the early 1700s. (I wish to add that that was then and this is now. Different times, different sensibilities.) Even so, Ruth could say this:
I desire to be thankful that I was born in a Land of Light where I have heard the Gospel preached and the Bible read...I have had encouragement from many places, John 6:37, Isaiah 1:18, John 7:37, Revelation 3:20 and 22:17. I desire the prayers of all God's people for me that I may walk and be found among Christ's people when He takes up His jewels. 
We, too, are living in a challenging time in history, yet we still live in this Land of Light where we may hear the Gospel preached and the Bible read. Let's push back against every effort to change our freedoms of religion or any other freedoms.
Thanks for reading such a lengthy post with so many links. Blessings!