Knife carves slice of 1837 history

Dramatic times make for thrilling stories. So, when Ruth Patterson's grandfather was repairing the floorboards on a house on Asquith Ave. and came across a hidden knife, the family wondered about the story behind it and thought back to one of the most exciting times in Toronto history – the Rebellion of 1837.

That's when William Lyon Mackenzie, the former mayor, led a group of patriots bearing muskets and pikes down Yonge St., intent on overthrowing their colonial masters. The rebellion fizzled and the story of the escape and eventual arrest of reformers became part of the lore of many Ontario families.

The Sunday Star has asked its readers to tell us about artifacts they own that might find a place in a museum of Toronto history. Toronto has no single museum dedicated to its past, though a number of sites have been proposed, most recently the silos at the foot of Bathurst St.

Patterson, a retired Wellesley Hospital nurse, wrote to us about her family's knife. The story that's delighted the family for generations is that the knife could have been concealed by rebel fugitives, who hid in the semi-detached, stucco house that her grandparents rented in the early 1900s.

Patterson, who later lived with her parents in another house on Asquith Ave. just east of Yonge St., where the Toronto reference library now stands, likes to think of the knife more as a pike. It's known that Samuel Lount, a leader of the rebellion who was later hanged, was a blacksmith and one of several who forged pikes for the rebels who had no muskets.

The original owner of her grandparents' house was said to be sympathetic to the reformers. "The story is well known," Patterson says. "On that terrible night, Thomas Anderson and Michael and Thomas Shepard (sometimes spelled Sheppard) sought refuge and were hidden at the back of the shelves of the larder behind the winter's supply of food, crocks and sacks."

As for the knife: "It looks to have begun life as a file, the handle broken off. Could it be one of Samuel Lount's pikes, so safely hidden all those 70-odd years?"

Patterson's story has not been verified, but most agree it's a good story. "I think it's a wonderful example of the intersection of memory and hope, of family and community history, of folklore and known fact," says historian Chris Raible, who has studied and written about Mackenzie extensively.

The men in the Shepard family were known across the country as reformers, Thomas Shepard recalled in his story of the 1837 rebellion as recorded in Landmarks of Toronto by John Ross Robertson.

The night of the rebellion, Shepard wrote, "Mackenzie ordered us to march down Yonge Street and away we went. He led us. I was in the front rank, along with Thomas Anderson and his brother John."

Sheriff William Jarvis and other "Tories" fired shots. "...if our fellows had only been steady we would have taken the city that night. I don't know what started our men running, but most of them made off up Yonge Street as fast as the other fellows did down to the town. For a while some of us at the front stood our ground, and I was firing away among the last of them."

Shepard, who was intent on escaping to the United States, spent the night of the rebellion at a Kingston Rd. tavern. It's not clear why he backtracked, but after taking a trail through the woods with Anderson and his brother Michael, he recalled, "that night we slept at the house of a friend east of Yonge St."

Shepard and the others were eventually arrested but never tried. They were sent to Fort Henry at Kingston and, fearing they would be taken to Australia, they escaped. They fled to New York state and after three years were pardoned, returning to the family farmlands in North York where they were prosperous landowners, remembered in the name Sheppard Ave.

Students to Learn Disputed History

Beginning in 2012, students will learn about controversial issues in Korean history involving neighboring countries.

According to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, the seventh edition of history textbooks for high schools includes territorial and historical disputes with Japan and China.

For example, the textbook will chronicle the fact that Seoul and Beijing have been in dispute over China?s five-year research program that claims Koguryo, an ancient Korean kingdom between 37 B.C. and A.D. 668.

The book will also detail Korea?s demand that Japan stop distorting information about its colonization of the Korean Peninsula in school textbooks. Students will also learn that the two countries are entangled over the Dokdo islets in the East Sea. The islets are South Korean territories claimed by Japan.

Current history textbooks deal only with the Dokdo islets disputes and do not deal with history distortions by China and Japan.

``Students will learn historical and territorial disputes concerning other countries in the new history textbooks. The book holds a view that these disputes should be resolved peacefully,?? Ahn Byong-woo, a ministry official said.

``East Asian countries have a clear identification through intimate cultural and idea exchanges for a long time. The new curriculum is expected to promote the co-development of the region,?? he added.

The new East Asia history book will also cover Vietnamese history. Vietnam is involved in economic exchanges with Korea.

Apart from the new contents, the government plans to bolster history education. Under the plan, curricula for Korean history and world history will be integrated and junior and senior students at high schools may choose East Asia history as an academic course.

In gesture of support for the government?s plan to strengthen history education, 100 historians will gather in Seoul today.

Scroll from 1871, displayed in Salem, tries to encompass history of the world

There are amazing things squirreled away in the vast collections of the Oregon State Library. Chief among them may be the work of one Sebastian Adams, Oregon pioneer, preacher, teacher, businessman, historian, biblical scholar and more.

His 21-foot scroll, "A Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern, and Biblical History" was a best seller of the 1870s but is little-known today.

The Chronological Chart presents the entire history of the world from its biblical beginnings to the mid-19th century.

A photo-replica of the first edition of the entire scroll will be on display at the Oregon State Library beginning Wednesday, along with a copy of a later edition.

Historian Virginia Green researched what little has been written about Adams, with assistance from Adams' great-great-great-granddaughter Margo Cash of Salem.

Adams used his extensive knowledge of world and biblical history, "synchronizing" the events in a richly illustrated timeline.

He worked with Strowbridge & Co. of Cincinnati, who illustrated and produced the scroll in 1871.

Adams traveled the country for six years selling copies, and it remains in many library collections. He moved to Salem in the 1860s.

His listing in the 1896 Salem City Directory, two years before his death, listed him as "capitalist" and insurance executive.

The chart is in the tradition of timelines popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. A Frenchman, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, an associate of Benjamin Franklin, is given credit for creating the first one in 1753.

After it was first printed in 1871, the chart was updated and reprinted twice, in 1876 and 1878.

Adams' chart will be on view on the second floor State Library through the year.

ENGRAVED ON AMERICA'S TOMBSTONE?

In 476 AD, Rome vanished into the history books. It was a heck of a run: Rome began as a Republic; it conquered most of the known world; it became an empire; it enjoyed slavery; it built lavish architecture still admired into the 21st century; Rome constructed the Coliseum where one million men suffered slaughtering in 200 years of the ‘games’; it partied with decadence in wine, women and song; Mark Anthony and Cleopatra’s passions became the stuff of legends; finally, Julius Caesar took knives in his gut; et tu Brutus?

You’ve read Rome’s demise in history books. Shakespeare immortalized great moments. You’ve seen the movies with Charlton Heston, Yul Brenner and Elizabeth Taylor. Rome’s greatness stretched for centuries, but it declined to its grave on the Boot Hill of history.

We see the similarities of Rome manifesting in America in the early years of the 21st century. Republic to empire; military bases in 100 countries around the world; Donald Trump nauseates us with his skyscrapers; 100,000 seat NFL stadiums entertaining the masses with outrageous salaried ‘gladiators’ and booze; Brad and Angelina’s endless nothingness; young men dying without reason in the contrived Iraq war; et tu Bushtus?

What will be engraved on America’s tombstone if it doesn’t stop an endless immigrant invasion? Who will write the words? Why did it happen? Who aided it within America’s borders? Will they be brought to justice? Why did they do it to their own country? To their own children? To the future?

A noble citizen wrote me last week with quotes from the late Ayn Rand, “Which of these two variants of statism are we moving toward: socialism or fascism?”

“To answer this question,” she said, “one must first ask: which is the dominant ideological trend of today's culture?

“The disgraceful and terrifying answer is: there is no ideological trend today. There is no ideology. There are no political principles, theories, ideals, or philosophy. There is no direction, no goal, no compass, no vision of the future, no intellectual element of leadership. Are there any emotional elements dominating today's culture? Yes! One! Fear!

“A country without a political philosophy is like a ship drifting at random in mid-ocean, at the mercy of any chance wind, wave, or current, a ship whose passengers huddle in their cabins and cry--"Don't rock the boat!"—for fear of discovering that the captain's bridge is empty. (Bush is our captain)

“It is obvious that a boat which cannot stand rocking is doomed already and that it had better be rocked hard, if it is to regain its course—but this realization presupposes a grasp of facts, of reality, of principles and a long-range view, all of which are precisely the things that the "non-rockers" are frantically struggling to evade.

“Just as a neurotic believes that the facts of reality will vanish if he refuses to recognize them (Bush’s current path)—so, today, the neurosis of an entire culture leads men to believe that their desperate need of political principles and concepts will vanish if they succeed in obliterating all principles and concepts. But since, in fact, neither an individual nor a nation can exist without some form of ideology, this sort of anti-ideology is now the formal, explicit, dominant ideology of our bankrupt culture. This anti-ideology has a new and very ugly name: it is called "Government by Consensus." Ayn Rand, Ford Hall Lecture, 1965

The noble citizen explained, “At some point in our history, we are going to have to deal with the “Mexicanization” of our Southwest and the Left Coast. The issues are pretty simple, but they are too complicated for politicians because they involve money.

“When mobs of illegals congregate in an American neighborhood, who is surprised that crime goes up? People who come illegally from Mexico often bring the “culture” of their home town with them, and that culture is the corrupt, immoral and scofflaw type that persists in Mexican cities. In Mexico, the cops are corrupt too, and whoever has the payola to keep them away--rules the neighborhood. The government is a bunch of “rich good old boys” in the Mexican sense, who aspire to greatness on top of a garbage heap. Only tourism and money sent home by illegals maintains stability.

“It is inevitable that politicians arising from this mass will manifest the culture from which they come. It’s already happening, and the “what’s in it for me” attitude of a lot of Hispanic politicians who cultivate the illegal “vote” and establishment of “citizen’s rights” for illegals in places like southern California is subject to become epidemic in areas of high Mexican concentration. It’s already costing the Southwestern states billions every year, just for infrastructure adjustment. So much for the “desirability” of having people who “do jobs Americans won’t do.” Americans are capable of mowing their own lawns and taking care of their own homes and children. This is a superfluous and specious argument, and does nothing to rationally support the millions of illegals establishing themselves every year on American territory.

“Yes, there are good people among them. But they are all illegals, and searching for a better life has different meanings depending on the level of cultural awareness and desire to assimilate. A separate Mexican community adds little to any city, and creates a lot of law enforcement problems. They bring corruption with them, and some of the problems are those of very dangerous and violent gang nature.”

He warned, “Don’t think it can’t happen. It is happening. Not even the United States can assimilate this many third world people at this rate.”

To say the least, Bush exhibits incompetence and constancy. Better that he were competent so he would change course much like the Captain of the Titanic should have! Ayn Rand and this reader’s words might be a sobering description of America’s tombstone. How is it that an entire nation got fat, stupid and lazy within 50 years of WWII? How is it that half the nation doesn’t vote in national elections and less than 10 percent in local elections? How come their remote control garners more importance than participating in their republic’s course?

What more will historians write on America’s tombstone?

“Here lies America. In 231 years, she won all her battles. She safeguarded mankind’s yearning for freedom. She created the greatest opportunity for the most people in the history of the world. She brought the world foreign aid, the Red Cross, Peace Corps, food to tsunami and earthquake victims, and health care. For 230 years, she maintained her sovereignty by guarding her borders. But something happened during the last fateful years of her existence. She, like Rome, left her borders open. A massive horde of foreigners broke into her inner being. Like a cancer, that multitude dismantled every aspect of her political and physical being. America lost its language and fractured into rival ethnic factions bent on destroying her. America’s armies fought contrived wars elsewhere while her leaders pandered for yet more money and power at the expense of integrity. Her president and Congress violated their oaths of office while ignoring the U.S. Constitution. Her people neglected to participate in their Republic. Massive demonstrations of lawless illegal aliens trampled the American flag in the streets of Los Angeles. Where America sustained laws, she became lawless. Where honor once guided America’s government, malfeasance reigned.”

What good can come from adding 100 million people via immigration to the United States by 2040? What do you resolve to reverse this tombstone and reclaim your country?

World War II History Center opens headquarters

The World War II History Center Foundation has opened its temporary headquarters to the public for the purpose of offering information and services to the public and allowing volunteers to help complete projects.

The World War II History Center Foundation is a nonprofit organization that was incorporated in April 2006. Its mission is to build, operate and maintain a regional-level museum and research library dedicated to the World War II era. The board of directors is made up of people who all share an interest in recognizing the conflict as a key to our country's development. They also believe that the generation of Americans that helped win the war should be recognized for their sacrifices as an example of what this country is capable of.

The purpose of the museum can best be described by the History Center's motto which is: “Remember, Honor, Educate.”

The intent is to remember what happened, honor the sacrifices made, and educate all generations that come after about the lessons learned.

The Foundation's charter membership drive began in August of 2006.

Phase I of the capital fundraising campaign began in February of 2007. However, the board of directors felt that in order to show real progress, it needed to have a physical presence in a community near to where the museum will be built.

The site for the museum has not yet been chosen, but has been narrowed down to the Wichita Metro area because of other neighboring attractions, and proximity to major interstate highways.

The temporary headquarters, located on the fourth floor of the Commerce Bank building at 100 N. Main in downtown El Dorado, was chosen because of the space available and because of the generosity of the building's owner.

The World War II History Center, which already offers several services through its Web site, intends to offer additional services at its headquarters. It will be offering its quickly growing research library, World War II movie collection for rent, and a few exhibits for the public's utilization. The purpose is to bring the public in to inform them about the museum project and its goals, while offering a taste of what the World War II History Center will provide once it is built.

Visitors to the World War II History Center are encouraged to call ahead at 322-8753 to arrange for a visit. As soon as enough volunteers are found willing to donate their time, regular operating hours will be established.

Keeper of history gets A's in our book

When Carol Harbison-Samuelson was a student at Medford Senior High School, she failed a history test.

Actually, failed is being euphemistic. She bombed. Big time.

"I got a big fat 'F,' " she says before breaking up into her well-known contagious laughter.

History buffs who know the research library manager and photo archivist at the Southern Oregon Historical Society can't help but chuckle. We know her as one of the brightest, most knowledgeable and engaging people in the region when it comes to local history.

She has been there to cheerfully guide us through one historical maze after another. Like her laughter, her energetic enthusiasm for all things historical is infectious. You couldn't help but walk away from one of her history lessons filled with inspiration.

Sadly, Friday was her last day at SOHS. After 21 years with the society, she is taking a break.

"With any good artifact, you got to give it a rest, and I need a little rest," she says. "I hate to go, but it's time."

But she consented to sitting down for a chat about why history and local historical societies, many of which are in dire need of financial and volunteer help, are important.

"We all are the keepers of the history," she explains. "We have the responsibility to make sure it is not lost. And if you don't take care of it, it will be lost."

Born Carol Hjorten on June 4, 1948, in Astoria, she moved with her family as a little girl to Medford, where she graduated from high school in 1966, the one bad history score notwithstanding.

History is in her genes. Not only was she born in the Pacific Northwest's most historical town, but so were her parents.

"My (maternal) grandfather Otto Owen helped found the Clatsop County Historical Society," she says. "My mother didn't understand the joy I got from history but my father loved history. He was first generation native Oregonian. His father got off the ship from Norway in 1903."

And there was her grandfather, Owen, a history buff's buff.

"When we moved down here, my grandfather took me out to the Jacksonville Museum to meet the Hanley 'girls,' " she says. "That's what he called them."

She was referring to the pioneering Hanley family which would eventually donate the historic family farm to SOHS. By then, the Hanley sisters were elderly folks with gray locks. While poring over material left at the Hanley house, the SOHS staff found a note from Otto Owen to then aging Mary Hanley about Oregon's centennial celebration in 1959.

"Grandpa died when I was 13 but I've always thought he would be tickled pink that I am now the gray-haired old lady at the place," Carol observes. "I had such fond memories of going out to the museum with grandpa. I always wanted to be a volunteer at the Jacksonville Museum."

She volunteered a little over two decades ago, participating in its first docent-training program.

"That was it — I was hooked," she says. "I read everything I could get my hands on about local history."

She became the sleuth who could connect the historical dots, be it a name to a face on a faded photograph or a date to an event lost in time.

"You can take it from wherever you want to take it from, but I believe these people who were before us want their stories known," she says. "After 21 years of doing this, I know there is some force out there. And, by golly, it has been such a joy to help tell their stories. But when a story is lost forever, that just hurts my soul."

Just as it warms her soul when she can connect the dots to a family's story. She recalls a man once contacted the SOHS office from New Jersey, looking for distant relatives who had come west to Oregon.

"He had an uncle, a priest, who had come out here," she says. "The man had a postcard dated around 1917 his uncle had sent his family."

With that, she eventually tracked down a family member, thus continuing that family's story down through history.

"If you don't have historical societies that are keeping that history alive — oral history, newspaper articles, photographs — then it can die and be lost forever," she says. "Guarding the books that tell the stories, the oral histories, the three-dimensional artifacts, is so very important."

While lauding those who are volunteering at local historical societies, she urges the rest of us to get off our duffs to support those societies.

"But if you don't have a deep passion for history, you shouldn't be working at an historical society," she stresses. "Without that passion, you can't find the rest of the story."

It matters not a whit to her that your family has deep roots in the region or that you just fell off the potato truck: She will tell you we all have a stake in local history.

"History is five minutes ago," she says. "We are all making history. It tells us who we are. We will always need people who are keepers of that history."

People like Carol Harbison Samuelson, one who aced history's ultimate test.

A lesson in history

What is it about history and conflicts? For some reason, academic debates, best left in the tobacco stained studies of tobacco stained academics, become-quite literally-matters of life and death. This is not just the case in Georgia-the Orange Order of Northern Ireland are named after the seventeenth century King William of Orange, and Kosovo Polje, where the Kingdom of Serbia was defeated by the Ottoman Empire in 1389, is one of the most crucial factors in the ongoing debates about the final status of the province.

However, in Georgia, the history angle is more pronounced than almost anywhere else in the world. The two ultranationalist leaders most associated with Georgia's ethnic conflict were both academics. Vladislav Ardzinba, the Abkhaz secessionist leader, was himself an historian, while Georgia's first president Zviad Gamsakhurdia was a philologist with a passion for history.

Last year, South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity made a great song and dance about "documentary proof" that South Ossetia had voluntarily joined the Russian empire in the late eighteenth century, and that the "legal documents" to this effect had never been repealed. Both Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatists are wont to claim that, historically, they have never been part of Georgia, and it was Stalin's arbitrary dividing of the republics of the USSR that led to their inclusion in the Georgian SSR, this in spite of the fact that the republican borders follow the huge natural border of the Caucasus Ridge.

Soviet nationalities policy stressed autochthonism, the idea that a people are entitled to a particular territory because they were there first. This led to extremely spurious histories delving back into the mists of time being created by each of the groups that found themselves with a union republic, or an autonomous republic or district.

Naturally, when you are attempting to trace the ethnogenesis of small, non-literate peoples on the edge of pre-history you are going to be speculating some. But problems arise when two such historical projects overlap each other, and when two groups claim the scant historical and archaeological evidence available as backing up their version.

This is exactly what happened with Georgian and Abkhazian historiography, and a war of words between academics set the stage for the all too real war that cost tens of thousands of lives in the early nineties. Unfortunately, history has reared its ugly head again with the latest Abkhazian history textbooks being distributed to schools throughout the self declared republic. These books present the unadulterated Abkhaz viewpoint, which, inevitably, either excludes Georgians altogether, or presents them as oppressors. Far be it from us to judge the historical accuracy of these books, but surely it cannot help establish the mutual trust and confidence that the Abkhaz themselves say is necessary for the settlement of the conflict.