Happy 4th of July!

My visit to Ripley is perfectly juxtaposed to our nation’s celebration of independence. I have been pondering my personal history, my family’s history, and today all the history of the United States. Over the last week I have spent hours listening to my grandparents tell stories of their past. I have been learning about my great grandparents and kin, as well as the generations before them. Furthermore, we are blessed to have incredibly detailed accounts of our genealogy thanks to a very special aunt. I have been looking at ancient deeds and wills, old photos, and other incredible family artifacts and heirlooms. One of the things that has captured my imagination is the address given by Rev. T. H. Robinson (one of my ancestors) to a Cochrane family reunion on August 14, 1897. I would like to share an excerpt with you. Bare in mind, this reunion was held 93 years after my ancestor Alexander Cochrane became the first farmer to own land in Chautauqua County.

“…Some have not heard the summons and they are not with us today. The Father’s house on high has gathered many into its loving embrace and unending fellowship. Others are in earthly home hundreds and thousands of miles away. Our fathers came from the narrow confines of their early island homes beyond the sea so pent and close, into this broad land of valleys and mountains and great prairies, of mighty rivers and inland seas, large enough for the world’s shipping; and their children and grandchildren caught free and venturesome spirit of the continent itself, and they have followed the flag of their country until today they may be found under every sky that looks upon this great land.

A few still gather around the fires kindled here nearly a century ago, but the rest have home eastward and southward and westward and have made their homes in the heart of this Empire state, in the great commonwealths of the northwest, in the regions beyond the Mississippi, in the Alaska borders, and among the ranches of prunes and apricots and olives. Within sight and hearing of the murmuring waves of the vast Pacific.

It has been impossible to hold them here, indeed to hold them anywhere. They belong to a peculiar race of men, a combination of pluck, perseverance, solidarity and fire. No stolid, phlegmatic, slow-going, plodding people were they, but a restless, free-spirited people, who, form the earliest founding of this continent of the setting sun have chosen to be the pioneers and the vanguards of the new civilization. They sought the frontiers and the borderland that they might plant the flag of their nation and the cross of their religion in soil where they had never been before been seen. “

Pretty incredible, huh? When I read this I am struck by how perfectly it captures the essence of the American people. And not just my ancestors who were some of the first to immigrate here, but each and every adventuress immigrant who has come since from a myriad of different countries and hemispheres. All coming with the shared goal of a better life in a promised land. Happy Independence Day America! This truly is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Don't fret! This flag is on a thick blanket! Not on the floor!