I am Not the Person I Thought I Was
Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812. Oddly, this war has led to some startling revelations about myself.
I’m not the person I thought I
was. Few of us are, but usually we learn
this bit by bit. Everyone who labors in
the dusty halls and musty graves of genealogy knows that right about the time
you think you have a good bead on your family, one more fragile slip of paper
shows up and any preconceptions you may have arrived at—no matter how well
constructed—are tipped on end.
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 (arriving at
Pemaquid Point, Maine in 1635) grew with the nation. I thought all of that until a few days
ago. The rest of this story unfolds like
an episode of Murder, She Wrote.
In a recent flurry of cleaning
and culling, I was going through my files for the book, including the original
manila folder that Mom had given me. I
started, yet again, going through every envelope. It was all there, just as I remembered, even
the totally inappropriate 5 x 8 envelope with Mom’s frustrated scrawl across
the outside “All of this amounts to a big nothing!” I opened it up and took out the folded
collection of articles she had stuffed in it all about the Recreational Vehicle
lifestyle, acquired when my husband and I bought our first RV and went a-Viking
(to Mom’s dismay). I would have
discarded this years ago but for Mom’s little notes all over the first page. This time it was going in the trash. I tossed
it toward the discard pile and that is when a scattering of typed pages angled
their way out of the newsprint.
And that, as they say, is when
the fight started. I was looking at
information that put me at odds with what I had been told by people I assumed
were entrusted with the truth and willing to share it with me in unadulterated
form. Oral history, which I had taken as
gospel, was now fighting with written documentation. To accept one, put me at odds with the
other. To disavow those I have respected
for a lifetime means hooking my star to disembodied bureaucrats in a distant
office of vital statistics.
Embedded in those press clippings
was a six-page chronology of records compiled by a genealogist in Toronto,
Ontario. It was headed with the name
“Ezra Blaisdell, 1767-1850.” I am Ezra’s
6th generational descendant. I have always known the name; I did not
know the man.
When I started this climb up my
family tree I had seen all of my ancestors as variations on one theme—the
grandfather I had always known. Would
not all of my ancestors be people of infinite patience, iridescent humor,
understated character and supportive love?
I had never seen my grandfather Blaisdell in any other way so that is
the perception I imposed on each preceding generation. If I was willing to place that much certainty
on the complex Blaisdell ethos, was I not equally adamant about the historical
backdrop of their lives? The rational
part of me said that mine was a family like every other family, filled with a
full arc of human personalities, strengths and failures, but my sentimental
side always thought the good guys won.
My initial research had already
disabused me of one idealistic notion. I
was first shocked then curiously amused to find that during the Revolutionary
War my branch of Blaisdells were Royalists—Crown supporters. A small group (my group) had fled to Canada
during the War for Independence! I also
learned that they went west into what was then called Upper Canada (now, Ontario). I did not know exactly when or why they
re-entered the United States, but family oral history said they fought
honorably in the Civil War. I have
photocopies of land grants given to my Great-grandfather, Marshal Newton Blaisdell,
in Rock Country Minnesota. One of these
is signed by Chester A. Arthur, another by Grover Cleveland. All of this, I had been told, was for Civil
War service. I liked that scenario. Those were my people, fighting the big fight
for equality that I had joined on a much smaller scale during the Civil Rights fight
of the late ‘60s.
But now, examining the data in
front of me, my latter-day righteousness vis
a vis a Civil War freedom fighter was being tested.
Except for the land grants, which
are real enough, the rest of the Civil War story was hazy history. Ezra Blaisdell, on the other hand, was now
resting in my hands as a fairly fleshed-out human being. Ezra was not the Canadian ex-pat I assumed he
would be. This blacksmith, plate caster
and boiler maker was born in New Hampshire, paid taxes in Vermont during the
entirety of the War of 1812, and did not move to Hawksbury, Upper Canada until
1822! Both he and his wife, Lydia, died in 1850. While we don’t know what caused Ezra’s demise,
I am assuming Lydia’s death may have been connected to having giving birth to
12 children in 19 years!
Certainly, the border between
Canada and the burgeoning nation of the United States had been a permeable and
illusive reality for some time. People
moved often, but for small distances, putting up disposable homes and small
scale land, subsistence farms. How fluid
was this Blaisdell diaspora? And why
weren’t these people behaving according to my assumed narrative? I read on.
Their first son, Marshall Newton
Blaisdell, was born in 1799 and he, as my great-great-grandfather, was of
interest. 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 that most
Americans know nothing about. Well, next
to nothing. There is the story of Dolly
Madison saving George Washington’s portrait before the White House was burned,
but, for most of us, that would be the end of 1812 knowledge.
This sheet of historical minutia was
also the first clue in my family’s confused heritage. The Civil War is easy to place, define and
defend in one’s mind. The War of 1812 is
a loosely placed two pages in the history books, no well-defined heroes, no
master of mood and strategy in the White House and no lingering shadows. Why put an ancestor in the War of 1812 when
you can just as easily plop him down in the middle of the Civil War? Did any of this fit with the documents in my
hand as opposed to the stories in my mind?
Marshall Newton Blaisdell was at
the battle of Queenston Heights and Lundy’s Lane. These two battles, both fought on the Niagara
River and on both sides of the then contested United States/Canadian border
were two of the bloodiest and costliest battles of the War of 1812. To know that my grandfather’s grandfather was
a player in ground-zero history was both fascinating and sobering in equal
parts. And 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.
It was probably the promise of
bounty land in Minnesota that brought Marshall Newton back to the US in
1853. He received 160 acres in Rock
County, Minnesota. I had no problem with
a good entrepreneurial spirit bringing my ancestors back to this country. This was a time when land was worth
gold. But I felt short changed, trading
in a Civil War hero for an 1812 drummer.
His 8th child, my
great-grandfather, Marshal M. Blaisdell (born in 1845, also in Canada) would
buy land adjacent to his father’s. This
may or may not be for Civil War service.
The line of descendants ran on, but the narrative stopped on the pages I
had in front of me.
What I thought I knew I do
not. What I thought was true may be true
only in portions. What I need to find
out is a great deal. 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. We
also tend to assume that what we are told as children is correct and confirmed
by the people we trust with all of our other truths. Maybe this is just one more lesson in independent
thought that we need to acquire as we grow older and see our parents as humans,
subject to all of the frailties thereof, and not just as the super human called
“parent.”
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. I have kept the faith.
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