The War of 1812 and Personal Surprises

The War of 1812 started on this day.  But my interest in this obscure “second war for independence” actually began this winter when I discovered something interesting.

I’m not the person I thought I was.  Few of us are, but usually we learn this bit by bit.  Several years ago I became my family’s truth seeker.  It isn’t the job I wanted but it is the job I got.  When your failing mother sends you her tirelessly gleaned but randomly arranged portfolio on the family, you don’t tell her that she really needs to rattle the rest of the family tree for a willing participant.   You thank her and start sorting. 

Ten years later I had turned the papers, my own research and a love of the “small” stories of American history into That Blaisdell Blood: A Novel.  I gave lectures on the message and the means I had used in writing the book.  I thought I knew as much as any person about how my mother’s family, but I was wrong. 

I have recently uncovered information that put me at odds with family oral history.  My problems start five generations back with the name of Marshall Newton Blaisdell.  He was born in 1799, the son of Ezra Blaisdell an American ex-pat, living in Canada.  Yet, at some time great-great-great-grandpa Marshall must have decided he was an American after all.    This plucky lad was a soldier/drummer in Capt. Malachi Corning’s company, Eleventh Regiment of Infantry during the War of 1812. 

The War of 1812!  Now here is a piece of history about which most Americans know only two things: Dolly Madison saved George Washington’s portrait before the White House was burned and Frances Scott Key wrote the Star Spangled Banner.

Marshall Newton Blaisdell was at the battle of Queenston Heights and Lundy’s Lane, the two bloodies and costliest battle of the War of 1812.  They were fought on the Niagara River and on both sides of the then contested United States/Canadian border.  What did this soldier-in-the-fray look like?   Don’t picture him as a strapping fighter.  His discharge certification describes him as “about thirteen years of age, four feet ten inches high, light complexion, blue eyes, brown hair and by occupation when enlisted a Farmer.” 

The mind spins: thirteen years old, a farmer, a soldier, a survivor!  And, while he provides a pretty good description of me at that age, he sounds very little like the dark haired, gray eyed (but diminutive) man my grandfather was.  And he evidently held no grudge against the British for his military service, because he followed his father to Canada in 1826.

We like to think of our family as a neatly composed picture.  Even the difficult members of the group belong in their own little sub-group with all of their definers arranged in bulleted precision.   But what I thought I knew I do not. 

I am an American, of Canadian breeding.  I have an ancestor that fought in the War of 1812 and then chose Canada as his home.  Does any of this matter?  Certainly we are all free standing individuals.  We are neither responsible for the bad actions of those who came before us, nor can we take credit for their good deeds.  But looking at the people whose DNA brought us here can give us a sense of continuity.  I believe it can make us better people.  Who wants to be the weak link in that chain?  

Mother, it turns out, knew what she was doing all along, so I keep the faith.