The following is taken from a 19th century English prose and poetry magazine. It is a useful remembrance for those of us who have suffered recent loss of family, friends, or pets.
“The sinless soul of the cherub child, that dies on its mother’s breast, wings its way to heaven, unconscious of the joys it might share here, as well as of the many, many miseries of which it might be partaker. This can hardly be called death. It is but the calm, soft ebbing of the gentle tide of life, to flow no more in the troubled ocean of existence; it is but the removal of a fair creature –“too pure for earthly stay”– to make one of that bright band of cherubims which encompasses in glory and in joy the throne of the living God.”
I wrote the following whimsical, nutty poem many years ago when my two oldest sons were in elementary school. Every Christmas Eve my family reads this poem along with the traditional Night before Christmas and the Christmas story in the Bible.
Christmas Eve, and Papa Mouse
Is at work throughout the house
Gathering up presents for the little mice
Yummies that will taste so nice.
Oh look! There’s a piece of cheese
(So dusty it will make a mouse sneeze!)
Oh yay! A crust of bread
(So moldy it looks quite dead.)
To make a long story short
Of Christmas presents found, there’s no news to report
Papa found absolutely nothing, zero, none
It looked like mouse Christmas would be no fun.
But then Papa heard a strange sort of noise
Perhaps it was stirring little mouse boys?
But no, he heard it again, but louder now
And down the chimney it came with a pow!
There he was, covered in soot, dressed in red, big as a cat–
But no!, to Papa’s horror, it was Santa Rat!
With long, shiny whiskers, and a skinny long tail
“Curses,” yelled Papa, “he’ll see me without fail!”
But Santa Rat didn’t see him, just heard a yell,
From who, in the dark room, he couldn’t quite tell.
But then he saw a shivering frightened mouse
And asked, matter-of-factly, “how many mice in this house?”
“And where are the stockings, hanging about the room?”
“I’ve go to fill them and go—zoom, zoom, zoom!”
Papa, however, was amazed by the thing with the hat
and red coat, the jolly fat pack-rat.
Santa Rat said, “Don’t just stand there, give me a hand!”
“I’ve got many more stops tonight in winter mouse-land.”
So Papa came and helped him unload
The bag so big it was ready to explode
With toys and candy, and other mouse yummies
Just waiting for morning, and hungry mouse tummies.
Then up the chimney went that jolly old rat
And upon his sleigh the fat rat sat.
Then off he flew to other rodent houses
To ensure that Christmas morn would have many happy mouses.
And Papa heard him exclaim, as he went from sight:
The scientific/modern viewpoint about climate change is that humans can rationally decide to save the environment by implementlng bureaucratic scientific policies based on government programs.
But if humans are at base animals they will continue in a survival of fittest, competitive, instinctual mode where each individual provides for his/her own needs. Each human works for his/her own food and shelter regardless of the consequences for the environment. The climate will never be saved.
However, the Christian/Catholic environmental argument is that humans are the moral agents of Creation. God has made humans stewards of the Earth. Only when humans actively embrace this role–which is a moral, ethical responsibility toward God’s gift, the Creation–will we be able to save what we are in the process of destroying.
The Church teaches us that it is humanity’s responsibility to protect and care for the environment. Animals have no such awareness. But humans by their capacity to understand the possibilities of the future based on the lessons of the past, and their concept that what God created is not neutral, but Good, allows human to accept the responsibility of, as Pope Francis says, Caring for Our Common Home.
Christianity is a humanism, human-centered, simply because God made humans to be the pinnacle of Creation, to have the intellectual discernment to make judgments about ourselves, to decide on what is right and wrong based on God’s teachings. Hence humans are made in God’s image, as moral agents able to work towards God’s aims. If God made the Creation, and it is Good, as the book of Genesis declares, then humans are obligated, as Christians, to work on its behalf, to bring to fulfillment what God plans for the Creation, and not to destroy it in the utter pursuit of animalistic, instinctual aims.
When humans view themselves as moral agents, as agents of God, then humans will accept the responsibility of caring for the environment in a way that atheistic, valueless, amoral scientific thought will not do. A pious science is the key to saving the environment.
Fear had attached itself to his very being. It was a presence, something a part of him, deep inside, usually hidden, absent from awareness.
All creatures in each moment sense the Fear. Instinct usually takes over to impel the creature to act, to survive, to put off, for a time, the inevitable. Humans sense the Fear but willingly brush it aside, submerge it, ignore it, make it appear ludicrous, mask it. But it is unrelenting. TheFear arrives from everywhere, nowhere, instantly surrounding its prey, overwhelming, suffocating.
The Fear is the most horrible nightmare, the most disgusting creature that attacks without warning, its coils, or pincers, or tentacles grab, overpower, squeeze, cut, tear the flesh, wrap around the throat, strangling, excruciating.
TheFear strikes, a plague, erupting with horrible swelling boils, aching, bulging with pus, sickening, bringing about a slow agonizing end to life. Fear has a tendency to reproduce, like a virus splitting, dividing, becoming infinitesimal in number, legion, finding obscure parts of the brain to hide and wait for a moment of weakness in the host at which time to emerge, attack, disable.
The Fearinvaded a man.
It was the most hideous torture, burning the man alive at the stake of thoughts and emotions, drowning him slowly in his past guilt and sin, nailing him to the cross of the mistakes of all humankind and forcing him to bleed, suffocate, and thirst to death.
The Fear was his dark side, always on the brink of taking over his mind. In each moment, the fear convinced him that he would lose control, give in to the obsessions, do exactly what he did not want to do. To become something different, unrecognizable. To become legion.
Thousands of images, experiences, memories, feelings of guilt and humiliation, times of wanting to do something but being afraid to do it, moments of embarrassment and inaction, other times of action that were wrong, sinful: These were legion, stored in his mind, penetrating every aspect of the present, like countless atoms banging against the walls of his brain, wishing to exit, to be free—but the Fear kept them in control, waiting for the right time, the exact moment—when the man never knew—and without warning the legion of demons, of the images of the past, would come together, marshaled under the commanding Fear, and the man then would be faced with images of committing the unthinkable.
He thought of the most disgusting things, the most horrible crimes, the excruciating details of murder, all a product of his ruminating mind. He was like a cow, a horse, a donkey, an ass, grazing, hungering for grass, and more grass, unable to fill himself, unable to stop, obsessed with eating, compulsively swallowing–but it was never enough.
The thought, the panic, gripped him, as images, a legion of images, erupted in his consciousness about death and destruction and evil and sorrow. His future appeared determined. Fantastic thoughts foretold reality.
He was a demon, an agent of Hell, intent on destruction, on murder, biding his time, awaiting the moment when suddenly he would lose all sanity, all control, and he would throttle, strangle, and his victim would die horribly without a sound, silently.
The webs of fear were spun in earlier years. To live is to experience fear. The man’s fear was in response to the uncertainty of his environment–the constant possibility of loneliness, the darkness of night, the unknown, pain. The Fear was the result of restlessness, the dependence on the passing moment, as well as the narcissistic search for constant gratification, for pleasure to counter the pain of existence. The wisdom of the past supports the reliance upon doubts and fears to guide humans through the years; this message of despair and unhappiness seeps into the brains of old and young alike, instilling an infernal hubris and arrogance, that what cannot be known for sure is not worth knowing, indeed does not exist. Decay overwhelms delight and joy. Pleasure, beauty, and euphoria give way to pain, blemishes, and sorrow.
The man was a certain person in a certain place in a certain time who represented all humans in all places and in all times. Ancient sources briefly describe the man tortured by fear. He is unnamed save for his own appellation: Legion.
Whatever creature inhabited his brain, whatever legion of demons possessed his soul—it stirred the pot of fantasy with so many ingredients of fear and foreboding, so many tormented images of crime, of uncontrollable sins, insane murders. followed by accusations, torture, dungeon, chains, trial, confession, guilt, execution.
The Fear became the dominating force in his life. Every morning upon awakening his mind ferreted within to find a thought, an obsession, with which to destroy his sense of peace, his happiness. The legion of images flocked about him, settled upon him, determining the day of fear and anxiety. He could not rid himself of the thoughts that entered his consciousness; he could not reason them away; he could not convince himself that he would not do what he imagined. The Fear was like a great automaton within him, calculating, indiscriminate, unpredictable, and completely autonomous from what this man, Legion, wanted, wished, thought, or said.
He was unable sometimes to think because of the overwhelming presence of the Fear, his mind jumbled by so many images of disaster and despair—unspeakable images that he could not believe he was having, and yet he was. They were images of folly, one after the other. He dreamed of murder, of patricide, of random death, of rape and torture, involving people known and unknown. He envisioned himself as the agent of destruction. The resultant guilt mixed with confusion of how to explain it, what to do about it. So random were the fantasies that they were ultimately nonsensical.
Legion tried everything he could think of to resist, to fight, to avoid, to ignore; to embrace fear so to familiarize himself with it, to laugh at it. Nothing worked. Only death would bring it to an end. But death is not an option for a person unwilling to die. Death is to be resisted. Every part of one’s being—mind, body, spirit—must fight to survive.
Resist. Resist the foe. Resist the fear. Struggle against it. Force it away. Throttle it. Destroy it. Murder it. Free yourself from it at all costs. Run from it.
Legion had tried running from fear time and again. When the thoughts came, he tried to stifle the fear by going outside into the summer heat or cool winter nights; he drank wine beyond normal intoxication; he had sex, thought of sex; he hid in places of darkness to see if the Fear would go away; he called out to Heaven for help; he tried hiding in the city, anonymous, normal; he tried secluding himself. Fruitless. Winless. Exhausted.
How does a person resist Fear? How does a person resist the countless images from the past of error, sin, wretchedness, lust, violence? How is a random thought, a sensation, an image, a horrible feeling in the pit of the stomach, the stark loneliness, the seclusion from reality, the temptation, the deception, the demonization of the mind, the overwhelming presence of a legion of fear—how is it to be resisted?
Legion’s entire life had been focused on resisting. He had resisted how he looked, who he was, what he was taught, how he lived, where he lived, his society, his culture, dominant institutions, religious leaders, education, teachers, morals, ethics, government, war, life, death, and the present. He resisted anything that tried to pigeon-hole him, to define him, to control him, to institutionalize him, to make him what he was not.
To spend a life resisting yields questions upon questions. Some questions are simple, childlike: Why do we steal? Why do we lust for another? Why do we lie? Why do we seek to hurt? Why are we only concerned with Self? Some questions are profound, unknowable: How can the diversity of nature have a single point of origin? How can the years and months of countless centuries have a representative moment? How can the multitude be singular? How can the lives and thoughts of humans throughout time be contained in one? Then there were the ultimate unanswerable questions: Is there a god or gods? Who? What does he, they, want from us? Why does he, they, allow chaos, destruction, war, disease, hunger, death? What deity/deities would allow the suffering seen everywhere, every day, throughout time? What deity/deities would allow such Fear?
Legion personified the age-old struggle between freedom and order, liberty and authority. The liberty and freedoms human yearn for are opposed by the restrictions of society, artificial rules that impede natural inclinations, systems that guarantee order in a world filled with potential chaos. Youthful ideas of wantonness and misbehavior are confronted by authority imposing restrictions and regulations. The ways of the body, feeling, going against the ways of the mind, thought. Legion’s fantasy world—some of it he allowed, some of it he could not help—was opposed by the standards, norms, and decorum of society.
His fears were a veritable army of images, thoughts, recollections, fantasies, and dreams covering years of angst about physical cowardice, angst about self-control and obsessive thoughts, guilt about so many actions based on fantasy and images. He had obsessed about making mistakes, saying the wrong thing, looking askance at a person, appearing ridiculous, obsessing over the erotic.
He was insane with guilt, grief, and fear. Guilt is a deep well in the human psyche, and it takes much effort to descend deeper and deeper into the well of the past to discover the pangs of conscience that represent guilt. His guilt combined with poor self-esteem and an appalling lack of confidence; it burdened him with chains of the weight of the past. He was known throughout the region as a man in chains, naked and savage, violent and angry, fearsome, haunting. He was a man pursued. All throughout the village. Everywhere. No place to hide. Who were the pursers? Legion did not know. Likewise, he did not know what they wanted, why he was being pursued. He kept trying to hide. He found the best place of refuge to be living among the tombs of the dead.
Available online from Amazon, Wipf and Stock, and other online sellers
When in 1911 Claude Christopher Largent and Bessie Lura Amos were married, they brought to their union centuries of ancestral history that spanned the American South and Southeast, as well as early modern England and France. They descended from families who immigrated to America in the 1600s.
The Largent side of the family descends from French common people, artisans and farmers, who lived in the Old Regime of France, when monarchy and aristocracy dominated society and government and common people were typically living on the edge of poverty and exploited by the ruling elite. The name Largent is derived from L’Argent, meaning silver, or silversmith, which hints at the family’s forebears. The shadowy and distant past implies that the Largents emigrated from France to America in the 1600s. The earliest traceable ancestor was Sinon De L’Largent, who lived from 1590 to 1659 in the Bourgogne region of northeastern France. His son was Jean De L’Largent, born in the same place, who married Elizabeth Gonsal and relocated to the Ardennes region of northern France. Elizabeth was the daughter of Jacques and Jeanne (Carre) Gonsal of the Bourgogne region. She lived from 1615 to 1682; she and Jean had a son, Louis, who lived from 1648 to 1740. Louis appears to have been the Largent who emigrated to America along with his wife Jeanne St. Suplice, 1660-1740, daughter of Guillaume and Martine Cornuau St. Suplice. Louis and Jeanne had a son, Jean (or John).
The records that tell the story of John Largent’s life are vague, contradictory, and anecdotal. In the Maryland census/tax list for 1704 a John Largent is listed as residing in Baltimore Co., N. Side Gunpowder Hundred. Another record indicates that a John Largant arrived at Maryland in 1716. In “Virginia Select Marriages, 1785-1940,” there is a vague record of a John Largen son of Lewis Largen married to Rachel. Perhaps this was Rachel Moss, born September 21, 1701 in Wigan, Pemberton, Lancashire England to John Moss (1668-1735) and Rachel Fairhurst (1672-1747). An anecdotal account of Rachel (also known as Roselle Eviss Rachel DeMoss) is that she was a Protestant Huguenot from France who had escaped with her family from religious persecution. Perhaps this is what brought them, at some unknown date at the beginning of the 18th century, to America. More likely, because the Moss (or DeMoss) family goes back in time several generations in England, John and Rachel Moss emigrated to America for other, unknown reasons. When John Largent and Rachel Moss married is uncertain, perhaps about 1720; and how many children they had is similarly uncertain.
In a letter written from Lewis Largent to Joseph Largent in 1913, Lewis wrote confidently that John and Rachel had in addition to their first three sons probably another, Thomas, born about 1728. Thomas was apprenticed in 1738 apparently upon the death of John. “Thomas Largent removed with his guardian Daniel Burnett to South Carolina and was the progenitor of the North Carolina and South Carolina Largents,” Lewis wrote in the letter. Burnett was a blacksmith.
Meanwhile, the earliest known Amos that relates to this family history was Nicholas Amos, whose forbears, whoever they were, doubtless derived from England in the 1600s. Nicholas himself was born to unknown parents in New Kent, Virginia, in or about 1640, perhaps before. He was christened at St. Peter’s Parish. This parish, in New Kent, is situated near the Pamunkey River east of Richmond. He married perhaps in the 1650s though this is uncertain, probably to Mary, whose maiden name was perhaps Lowe. She was, perhaps, the daughter of Charles and Frances Lowe. Nicholas and Mary’s children included Rebecca, Margaret, Valentine, and Francis, born 1677 in the same parish. Francis married Elizabeth Lowe, born in 1690, in 1712; their children were Valentine, Charles, John, Francis, Judith, Mary, William Valentine, and James. Elizabeth’s father was William Lowe and her mother was Selina Ann Bailey, both of North Carolina.
Francis and Elizabeth’s son James was born on October 15, 1716, in St Peter’s Parish, New Kent County, Virginia. He married Elizabeth Carlysle in 1720, and they had a son, James Jr., born in 1755 in Lunenburg, Virginia, far to the southwest from St. Peter’s Parish, where James and Elizabeth had relocated. James Jr. married Lena Bradford, and they had a son in 1785, George Washington Amos. The Bradford’s had a long and varied history dating from sixteenth-century England and the seventeenth-century New England colonies.
Lena Bradford was the daughter of a North Carolina farmer, Thomas Bradford and his wife Sarah Ransom; he was the son of Thomas Bradford and Elizabeth Smith, who had migrated from Virginia to North Carolina in the mid 1700s. His father Richard Bradford was married to Frances Taylor. They emigrated from England to Virginia in the 1650. His father Richard Bradford lived in England, married to Jane Kendall. Richard’s father was Vespasian Bradford.
Vespasian Bradford of early 17th century London was a craftsman belonging to the city livery company, or guild, of cooks, people involved in the preparation of food. His namesake was the Roman Emperor Vespasian, who ruled Rome from 69 to 79 AD. Who named the English child born in 1560 this unique name is a mystery. His parents were either William and Alice Bradford or Richard and Catherine Bradford.
Vespasian was likely born in Yorkshire, England, in 1560, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth Tudor. He died during the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, James Stuart. Vespasian married late in life, to Joane Burrowse, on May 28, 1604, when he was 44, and she was 12. This young woman was the daughter of Sir Richard Burrowse and Lady Barbara Burrowse. They were married in the Shoreditch Church in London.
According to The Parish Registers of St. Thomas the Apostle, London, containing the Marriages, Baptisms, and Burials from 1558 to 1754, London, 1881, Vespasian and his wife had a son Richard, baptized June 25, 1605, a daughter Margaret, baptized May 15, 1606, a daughter Elizabeth, baptized May 9, 1607, a daughter, Anne, baptized June 18, 1608, a daughter Jane, baptized July 6, 1609, a daughter, Joane, baptized Aug. 7, 1610, and a son Richard, baptized Dec. 9, 1611.
Vespasian was a member of the Worshipful Company of Cooks in London, a very old livery company. In 1616 he was listed in the charter of the Worshipful Company of Cooks as an Assistant, one of a small group of liverymen who were in charge of the guild—the Court of Assistants.
Vespasian was buried April 11, 1618, at St. Antholin Church, Budge Row, London—an Anglican church in the heart of the city. Joane outlived Vespasian by seven years, dying in 1625.
Back to the Largent family: Thomas (Largin) Largent, according to marriage records, was born in Virginia in 1728 and he married Nancy Lang in 1750. Little is known about the early lives of Thomas and Mary besides the anecdote about Thomas’s apprenticeship to a blacksmith noted above. Thomas and Nancy at some point migrated from Virginia south to Burke County North Carolina, where their son Thomas was born; and then they moved on further south to South Carolina. In 1780, Thomas was fifty-two and Nancy was fifty; a South Carolina census record from the ninety-sixth district indicates that Thomas was on the Grand Jury, “Petit-Jury men and Jury Men in Civil Causes,” in a region of northwestern South Carolina between the Broad and Saluda Rivers. More specifically, he lived on the Little River near its confluence with the Saluda River in Newberry County. In the 1790 federal census, he was listed as having seven family members, one male over sixteen years, one male under sixteen, and five women. In the 1800 census, there were thirteen household members, all free, six males and seven females. In his last will and testament, dated 1802, we learn that Thomas, Nancy, and family had migrated south of Newberry County to Edgefield County, on the southern border of South Carolina with Georgia, near Augusta. In his will, Thomas divided his lands into thirds, giving equal amounts to his sons Reuben, William, and Thomas Jr. The remainder of his moveable estate he divided among his daughters Mary, Sarah, Janey, Ann, Nancy, and Elisabeth. He left his widow Nancy most of his stock, tools, furniture, and money. She did not long enjoy this, as she died soon after Thomas.
Nancy Lang, Thomas’s wife, was the daughter of Robert Lang, born in Portsmouth, NH, in 1728. Robert Lang moved to South Carolina, became a plantation owner, and died in 1763. His wife was Millicent Higginbotham, who was born in Barbados in 1675 and died in 1740. Her father was a sea captain, hence the reason for her birth in the Caribbean. The Higginbotham’s of Barbados were quite wealthy because of the sugar trade.
The life of Thomas and Nancy Largent’s son Thomas, Jr., is shadowy at best, in part because of the scarcity of records, in part because he is easily confused with his father of the same name. I speculate that Thomas, Jr., was born in North Carolina, meaning that Thomas Sr. and Nancy in their peregrinations from Virginia to South Carolina must have lived in North Carolina, where Thomas Jr. was born. Thomas Sr. and Nancy lived in North Carolina long enough for their son to take up roots there and stay when they moved south to South Carolina. Thomas Jr. lived in Burke County, in central North Carolina. He likely served as a soldier during the American War for Independence, as he received a grant of one hundred acres in 1800. The land was located on Smoky Creek, a tributary of the Catawba River. It is possible that his children included William Anson, Thomas Washington, Elijah, Elizabeth, Mary, and James. However, the records are so unclear, that even the name of his wife—possibly, Nancy—is not known for certain.
Meanwhile, while this line of the Largent family moved west from Virginia to North Carolina to Illinois, the line of the Amos family I am tracking was moving from Virginia to Georgia to Alabama. George Washington Amos, son of James Amos Jr., who died in 1818, and Lena Bradford, who died in 1829, traveled with his parents from Virginia to Georgia in the early 1800s. George married Anna Bentley in Virginia before their move. They benefited in 1832 from the Cherokee Land Lottery in Georgia, purchasing perhaps 160 acres in Hancock County of land confiscated from the Cherokee Tribe by the state of Georgia. George and Anna had a large family; their children were Daniel, Martha Ann, George Washington Jr (II), Henry, Beverly, John W., William, Wyatt, Millyann E., James M., Caroline F., Mary J., and Susan C. They also acquired a number of slaves to work the land, owning 22 in 1840, half of whom were children. Anna died in 1843, and George followed two years later.
Their son George Washington II was born February 9, 1813 in Hancock, Georgia. During his life he relocated west to Grimes Alabama, where he died April 1, 1889. His wife was Catherine Hammock, born April 8, 1817 in Georgia; she died 1886; they were married August 24, 1831 in Georgia. George Washington II was a successful land owner both in Georgia and Alabama. He and family relocated to Alabama sometime during the 1850s. According to 1850 slave schedule, he owned 14 slaves ranging from age 69 to age 1; in the 1850 census owned land worth $600. In the 1860 census his land was worth $3200. After the war the value of his real estate declined precipitously to $900. George and Catherine’s children were Willborn, Jane, Henry, Beverly, William, George Washington III, Martha, and Zachary. Surviving portraits of George Washington II and Catherine show him to have been a strong, severe, serious man and his wife a pious woman with a somewhat gentle demeanor.
George Washington Amos II and Catherine Hammock
Meanwhile Thomas Largent Jr’s son James migrated from Burke County North Carolina to Bond County Illinois sometime in the early 19th century—perhaps after Illinois became a state in 1818. It is possible that James lived for a time in Tennessee, a place where many North Carolinians migrated in the late 18th and early 19th century. His brother William Anson Largent migrated to Tennessee. There is a vague record of one James Largent having served as a private from April 3 to 12, 1812, in the Tennessee Militia during the War of 1812.
In the 1830 Federal Census for Bond County, Illinois, James’s family included 1 son under age 5, 1 son between 5 and 10, 2 sons between 10 and 15, and a male between 40 and 50 (himself), 1 girl aged 5 to 10, 1 girl from 10 to 15, and 1 girl from 15 to 20, and 1 female 40 to 50, his wife. Their children were Thomas, Archibald, Harriet E., Margaret Mahala, Hugh Fox, Nancy Adeline, and John Marshall.
James died in 1830; his wife Margaret Fox Largent outlived him by 10 years. She was born in North Carolina in 1780 to James Hugh and Mary Fox. James and Margaret were both buried in southern Illinois.
Of their children, Archibald was born Feb. 1, 1806, in Burke, North Carolina; he died Nov. 20, 1838, Fayette, Illinois (buried at Mulberry Grove Cemetery, Mulberry Grove, Bond Co., Illinois); his wife was Lucenda Beach; they married April 26, 1825, in Burke County, North Carolina, when she was 17.
More is known about Lucenda A. Beach (who was Thomas Largent’s mother, George Washington Largent’s grandmother, and Claude Christopher Largent’s great-grandmother). Before her husband Archibald’s death in 1838, she bore five children: Thomas W., Eveline, Mahala Caroline, Archibald, and John. Lucenda was born in North Carolina, and died in 1875 in Illinois, living in Bond County. The Bond County federal census for 1830 lists Archibald and Lucenda with one child, the firstborn Thomas. As Thomas was born in Tennessee in 1827, we can assume that Lucenda and Archibald had lived in Tennessee until recently, moving to Bond County, Illinois soon after 1830. She was the daughter of John Marshall and Sarah Beach.
In the 1850 federal census for Fayette County, Illinois, Lucenda (spelled Lucinda) was a 41-year-old widow owning real estate valued at $600. She had living in her family the following: Eveline Merryman, age 20, Caroline Largent, age 17, Archibald Largent, age 15, John Largent, age 13, and James Largent, age 1. Archibald was listed as a farmer. Caroline, Archibald, and John attended school. There are several interesting items about this census. First, Eveline was called Merryman, and there were two families living next to the Largents with the last name Merryman. Eveline was a widow, her first husband was Cayson Harris Merriman, who was born between 1825 and 1828 and died in his twenties in 1850. James, their son, was 1 year old and living with Lucenda. Thomas, first born son of Archibald and Lucenda, and his wife Narcissa and child Nancy lived nearby on their own farm worth $150.
In the 1860 federal census, Lucenda lived in Vandalia, Fayette County Illinois, with Eveline and her new husband, James Thomas Davis. Eveline and Thomas were married Dec 18, 1852. Eveline was to die soon after, in 1861. Her son Thomas would live until 1887. Lucenda’s other daughter, Mahala Caroline, married William Stokes on Dec 12, 1855. Also living with Lucenda in 1860 was Rosetta Davis, age 2, James Merriman, age 11, Augustus Davis, age 19, Mary Evans, age 14.
Lucenda was a significant landowner. The year that her husband died, 1838, the land office of Fayette. Illinois, issued her “the South half of Lott number two of the South west quarter of Section eighteen in Township Six North of the base line of Range one West of the third principal Meridian, in the District of Lands Subject to sale at Vandalia, Illinois, containing forty acres.”
Lucenda’s eldest child, Thomas, departed Illinois for Missouri during the 1860s. Born in Tennessee, having moved with his father and mother to Illinois, Thomas lost his father when he was 10. Thomas met Illinois native Narcissa Ann Hayes and they were married Jan. 4, 1848, in Fayette County. He was 22, she was 17. They had five children together: Nancy, Narcissus Archibald, nicknamed Norris, George Washington, Lauretta, and Charles. Thomas and Narcissa lived at Township 12, Range 9, Macoupin, Illinois. Unfortunately, Narcissa died in childbirth or soon after when she bore Charles, leaving Thomas a widower with five young children.
Death and dislocation were common experiences for Thomas Largent and his family. A land record listed under Thomas Largin Largent, has one Thomas Largent purchasing land (34.94 acres) July 15, 1854, in Hickory Co., Missouri. Perhaps this was Thomas Largent father of George Washington Largent. Indeed, during the 1860s Thomas and his small family moved to Missouri. He remarried Lydia Stout in 1866. In the 1870 census from Missouri, Thomas is called Largin; he was 43, a farmer; Lydia was 23, at home, taking care of children Norris (17), a laborer on their farm, as well as George (14), also a laborer, Laura (4), and Thomas (1). The children of Thomas and Narcissa, Nancy, Lauretta, and Charles, were either dead or did not make the move to Missouri. Thomas and Lydia could read but not write; Norris and Grace could neither read nor write. They lived in Deer Creek township, Bates, Missouri.
While Thomas Largent and Lydia Stout Largent and their children were trying to make a living in west-central Missouri, further south, in western Arkansas, a family had arrived from Alabama: this was George Washington Amos III, son of George Washington Amos II and grandson of George Washington Amos Sr. GW Amos III was born in Talbot County, Georgia, on February 28, 1845. His family moved to Alabama when he was young, and after his marriage and service in the Civil War, he moved his family to Arkansas.
In the 1850 census, GW Amos III was six years old with seven siblings. His father, GW Amos II was 37, married to Catherine Hammock (married August 24, 1831). GW Amos II had been born in Hancock Georgia, south of today’s Oconee National Forest, near Atlanta. He would die on April 1, 1889 in Grimes, Alabama. The grandfather, GW Amos I, was born in Lunenburg, Virginia, in 1785. He married Anna Bentley on Oct 8, 1807. They moved to Georgia, where GW Amos I died on April 3, 1845.
During the 1850s, George Washington II and Catherine Amos and family moved to Pike County, Alabama, where they farmed. After the war began in 1861, and when George Washington Amos III reached his 18th birthday, he enlisted as a private in Company B, 57th Infantry Regiment organized at Troy, Alabama. He fought in numerous battles in Tennessee and Georgia, fighting against the invading armies of the North. Many of his comrades died, but he survived. A monument erected by the Atlanta Historical Society in 1944 commemorated the “American Valor” of the “participants in the Battle of Peachtree Creek, July 20, 1864,” in which GW III fought.
After the war, GW married Mary Jane Carter, born Sept. 29, 1842; she was 24 and he was 21. Mary was a native Alabaman, daughter of Seaborn and Hannah Carter; Seaborn Carter was a fairly wealthy Alabama farmer. According to the propriety of the time, GW (along with his brother Henry W.) had to post a bond of $200 guaranteeing that there were no impediments to the marriage: “Know all men by these presents, that we .. are held and firmly bound unto the State of Alabama in the penal sum of two hundred dollars; for payment of which, well and truly to be made, we bind ourselves and each and every of our Heirs, Executors, and Administrators, jointly, and severally, firmly by these presents….The condition of the above obligation is such that if there be no lawful cause why George W. Amos and Jane Carter should not be joined together in the Holy union of Matrimony, then this obligation to be void; otherwise, to remain in full force and virtue.”
Their first born was William Wilburn, 1867, followed by Seaborn Washington, 1868, John Henry, 1871, James Belvy 1873, Mary Catherine, 1875, Martha Matilda “Mattie”, 1877, Alexander Zacariah, 1879, Nettie, 1887, and Ada Lee, 1892. Remarkably for the time, all of their children survived childhood to die in adulthood.
In the 1870 census GW III and Mary Jane lived in Pike Co., Alabama, and had two young children (William Wilburn and Seaborn, 3 and 1); GW was listed as a farmer. His wife was illiterate, unlike him. He lived next to his father GW Amos II, probably farming the family land, as he was listed as having no real or personal estate. GW II was 58, wife Catharine was 53; two daughters lived with them, Rebecah and Isabella, 18 and 16.
In the 1880 census eldest son William Wilburn, aged 12, was listed as farm laborer to his father. The family had relocated to Arkansas, living in Big Creek, Sebastian, Arkansas (southeast of Fort Smith).
The move must have been in 1870 or 1871, as the following letter, from GW Amos III to his brother William Greensberry Amos, who was two years older, reveals:
febuary the 19 1871
To Mr. Wm. G. Amos
Der Brother it is with mutch pleasure that I seat myselfth this eavening to drop you A few lines to let you no that mea and my famerley is well at this time and I hope that these few lines may cum safe to hand and find you and your famerley snjoying they saim blessings brother I hant got no nuse to right to you onley we are getting A long verry well if I can just have good helth and A plenty to eat I think that I am all right brother this is A grate farmeing cuntry A man can make as mutch as he can gether here and not have to wirk near as hard as they do there if you was here you cold make as mutch in one year as you can there in too and stop every saturday and go A fishing land an’t as hy here as it is there but it is wirth three times as mutch A man can make enny thing here that he wants and there is A verry good range here and there is timber A plenty we don’t have no pine here but we can have just as mutch good oak wood to burn as we wont and hit burnes as well without lightwood here as hit does there with it brother hit lookes like ruiming A man to sell out everything and moove this fure but I dont burgrudge my move my selfth I han’t got nuthing but I hope hit won’t bea so all ways I have wirked A nuff since I landed here to get as mutch corne as I wont and to get 10030 lbs of meat I am getting A doler A hundard for splitting rails and they ant but 8 feet long timber is as good as I ever saw
Brother A man can get wirk to do here at enny time there is a right smart of people that han’t dun picking coton yet A man can get a doler and a quarter for every hundard poundes of coten they will pick brother you must excuse my bad rightting and spelling for this time for I am so fat and lazy that I can’t right good brother you must right to mea as soon as you get this and right to mea all of they nuse Tell all of my friendes to right to mea and al so tell them howdy brother it lookes like that you all wait for mea to right first I have rote this makes 7 or 8 leters that I have roten but I han’t got no anser from men onley those that I rote to pa and beckey brother I will Close for this tim by saying to you that I remain as ever your loveing brother until death so give my love to all of they famerly and receive A potion for your selfth so good by
G.W. Amos to W. G. Amos, Sabaston Conty Ark Greenwood To
The letter reveals that GW Amos grew corn, hunted or traded for meat, split rails for fencing and railroads, and picked cotton; he counted himself happy even if struggling to make a living. His family was large: five boys and two girls.
Mary died in 1895; GW married Martha Ann Harper, aged 47, in 1899. They had two children, one out of wedlock, Emma, born in 1897, another, Nada, born in 1901 (died, 1973). Martha died in 1902, and GW remarried Sarah E. Alford; they had no children. She was 49 when they were married.
In the 1910 census, GW and Sarah had three grandchildren living with them and one child, Emma, from his previous marriage. They were homeowners, farming in Bloomer, Sebastian Co. Arkansas, near Big Creek.
GW Amos III was a strong-looking man, according to several surviving photos. The photo taken when he was 18 before he enlisted reveals a pudgy, healthy young man with a full face and narrow, penetrating eyes. A later family photograph taken shortly before Mary Jane’s death shows a middle-aged man, stern, with a square face, no longer pudgy, thick hair and beard (without moustache). A photo taken around 1910 with four of his children shows a stern-faced man, lean, with heavy eyebrows, penetrating eyes, and a thick white beard sans moustache. A portrait perhaps drawn from a photo with his third wife Sarah Rambo Amos shows a white-bearded, brown-haired, stern man with sunken cheeks.
George Washington Amos III and Mary Jane Carter
In 1902 GW applied for an Arkansas pension as a Confederate veteran. His widow Sarah applied again after his death on Feb. 20, 1916. GW is buried at Greenwood, Arkansas. Sarah outlived him by six years.
GW and children Ada, Alexander, John Henry, Mary
About a hundred miles to the north in the 1870s, when GW Amos III was writing his brother about the virtues of his farm at Big Creek Township, Sebastian County, Arkansas, another family lived at War Eagle Township in Madison County, Arkansas. George Washington Largent, his first wife Armenty Dunagan, nicknamed Mittie, and their two daughters Louisa, 2, and Rosettie, 6 months, lived and farmed in 1880. Soon another child would arrive, Mae (or May). Nearby, GW’s brother Norris and his wife Amanda and children also farmed.
George Washington Largent’s life has a bit of mystery about it. His gravestone lists his birth date as August 15, 1859. The month and day are probably correct, though the year of his birth was probably 1855 rather than 1859. According to the 1860 U. S. Census, the family of Thomas Largent, in Macoupin Co., Illinois, was comprised of four children, including five-year old George Washington. He could not have been born in 1859, as he had two younger siblings, Lauretta, two, and Charles, four months. His mother, Narcissa Ann Hayes, died with the birth of Charles. So, George Washington was five-years old when his mother died. (The 1870 census lists him as 14—so he must have been born in 1855.)
When George was 10 or 11, his father married a 19-year-old, Lydia Stout. They moved from Illinois to Missouri at some point. In the 1870 federal census, Thomas farmed in Deer Creek Township, Bates, Missouri. He and his wife Lydia could read but not write, but his son George Washington was completely illiterate, and apparently remained so his entire life.
George had four wives during his life, outliving three. He was married to Armenty Dunagan, Sarah Bryant, Mary Lue Smith, and Annie Pool. George’s first three children were born to Armenty: Louisa, Rosettie, who was born Nov. 23, 1877, and lived for 85 years, and Mae, who was born Feb. 14, 1881, and lived for 47 years. When Mae was born, the young family and moved south to Chismville, Arkansas, north of Booneville.
After Armenty died Oct. 23, 1883, in her 28th year, George married Sarah Bryant on Feb. 7, 1884. Their marriage was childless, and she died within four years, date unknown.
The rest of GW’s children were born to Mary Lue Smith, who was, according to family tradition, ½ American Indian, tribe unknown. Her family lived in Dahoma, Franklin, Arkansas, in north central Arkansas, where George and Mary were married. George and Mary conceived their first child, Claude, out of wedlock, as they were not married until July 25, 1888, and Claude was born on July 2, three weeks earlier. George was about 33, Mary was 17. Overall, they had 13 children.
George Washington’s namesake, born in 1889, died in infancy; GW and Mary Lue’s third child, Norris, seems to have been favored over their first born, Claude. In the 1920 federal census, Norris and his family lived next door to GW and Mary Lue; meanwhile Claude and his family lived in a shack on GW’s land. In 1920, GW was 60, Mary L was 50; four daughters lived at home. He was a general farmer, owned his land. He and Mary L were illiterate. He was born in Illinois, his parents also. She was born in Arkansas, her father in Missouri, mother in Arkansas.
According to family traditions, GW left “Illinois under some kind of trouble,” which would be strange as he was but a child when they moved. Perhaps family tradition referred to Missouri. Another tradition has it that GW would lock the gate to keep suitors from courting his grand-daughter Marie.
GW and Mary Lue Largent
Mary Lue Smith Largent died Nov. 3, 1924, at age 53. GW remarried Annie Pool, age 63, on Feb 19, 1925. In the 1930 federal census GW owned his house, farmed, was 71, was illiterate and had no schooling. He was 71 and Annie was 68.
When GW died in 1936, he was buried next to his third wife Mary Lue in Ferguson Cemetery, Chismville, Logan Co., Arkansas. His epitaph reads: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”
By this time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, branches of the Largent and Amos families were living in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. They were soon to be joined together.
The eldest child of George Washington Amos III was William Wilburn Amos, who was born on April 18, 1867, in Pike Co., Alabama, in the southern part of the state, to George Washington Amos III and Mary Jane Carter Amos. William was their first-born son. He was brought up as a farmer and was so designated in the 1880 census. At age twelve he had not yet learned to read and write. He had six siblings. At some point in the 1870s the Amos family moved to Big Creek, Sebastian, Arkansas, on the Arkansas River. Nearby was the Calhoun family, whose youngest daughter, Arsula, met William at some point; they were married on Christmas Day, 1890, in Greenwood, Sebastian Co., Arkansas, south of Fort Smith in western Arkansas. She was seventeen and he was twenty-three.
Arsula was the daughter of William and Martha Rhodes Calhoun. William was an Illinois and Arkansas farmer and carpenter. He was born in May, 1826, in Williamson, Tennessee, to Jacob (Jack) Julian Calhoun (1802-1856) and Rebecca McCall (1797-1869). Martha Rhodes likewise was born in Williamson, Tennessee. the daughter of Christopher and Elizabeth Rhodes. Martha married William C. Calhoun on October 17, 1850 in Marshall, Tennessee. He was 24 and she was 19 years old. William and Martha had eight children. In 1852 their daughter Elizabeth was born, followed by William Thomas in 1853. After his birth the family moved to southern Illinois, Johnson County, in the corner of the state between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. There their daughter Amanda F. was born in 1856, James A. in 1862, Susan in 1863, Samuel H. in 1866, Robert M. in 1868, son Alphus in 1871, and daughter Arsula Jane in 1873. Martha apparently died in childbirth or soon after the birth of Arsula.
In the 1860 federal census, William listed himself as a carpenter. He registered for the Northern Civil War draft in 1863. In the 1870 census William listed himself as a farmer. He and Martha were both listed as illiterate. The value of their real estate was $800, personal estate $600. In 1870, the Calhoun family lived in Township 11, Range 21, Johnson Co., Illinois; the post office was at Goreville (southern corner of Illinois north of Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River).
After Martha’s death, William took his family of eight children to western Arkansas, Bates Township, south of Fort Smith, just east of the Oklahoma border, where he farmed and worked as a carpenter. By this time, William as well as all of the children were listed as literate. His oldest daughter Elizabeth kept house for William.
After Arsula married William Wilburn Amos Christmas, 1890, they had a daughter, Bessie, born on December 24, 1891.
In the 1900 census, Will was listed as a farmer who could read and write; perhaps Arsula helped him to learn. They rented. Their children were Bessie, 8, Harland, 6, Charley, 4. The lived in Center, Sebastian Co., Arkansas, southeast of Fort Smith. Ten years later the family had moved a few miles east to Boone Township (Booneville), where Will still farmed. By this time, Will and Arsula (or Sula) owned their own farm. Their children were Bessie, age 18, Harland, age 16, Charley, age 14, Reba, age 8, and Wayne, age 3.
During the next decade, one would assume that hard times came upon the family. They left Arkansas and moved to Oklahoma, settling in the town of Stigler, in eastern Oklahoma. They lived on N. Ninth St, and Will still farmed, working on his “own account,” either as a renter or farm laborer—it is not clear. His son Charley, still living at home, worked as a salesman at a drugstore. Bessie and Harland had left home, but Reba (Elizabeth Reba) and William Wayne were living at home. Will was 52 and Sula was 46.
During the next ten years, all of their children left home. Will and Sula lived at 341 S. 3rd St. in 1930. Will was no longer a farmer, rather a caretaker of the town cemetery. He was 60, she was 55.
Will and Sula Amos
Will died soon after, on died Feb. 17, 1931; he is buried in the cemetery in which he had once worked. Soon after Sula moved to Holdenville. There she lived in a small house by herself; no doubt she often visited with her children and their spouses Ray and Reba, Wayne and Willa Mae, Charles and Rose, all of whom lived in Holdenville. Sulla outlived Will by 17 years, dying on June 10, 1948. They are buried next to each other in Stigler.
Bess and Sula Amos
Will and Sula’s oldest child, Bessie, married Claude Christopher Largent on December 3, 1911, in Booneville, Arkansas, where they made their residence during their early years of marriage.
Claude Largent was born to George Washington Largent and Mary Lue Smith in Booneville, Arkansas, on July 2, 1888. George Washington (GW) was a farmer and Mary Lue, who was half Indian (tribe unknown) was his third wife. Mary Lue and GW had thirteen children, of which Claude was the first. His siblings were: George (November, 1889-December, 1889), Norris (Narcissie) A. (1892-1952), (Mary E, 1893-infant), Bettie (1893-1960), William (1896-1896), Evert (1898-1899), Sarah E. (1900- ?), Tommy (1901-1907), Mattie (1904-1981), Mae (1906-2002), Viola M. (1907-2002), Georgia Naoma (Oma) (1909-1984), and step siblings Louisa (1979-?), Rosettie (1879-1963), and May (1881-1926).
For many years Claude’s children and relations believed he was born in 1889, and indeed the 1900 U. S. Census claims as much. However, George Washington II was born in November, 1889, and died the following month. Hence what Claude recorded on his 1917 draft registration, that he was born in 1888, was true. (Strangely, however, in his 1942 draft registration, Claude listed his birth erroneously at 1889.) Claude was born a few weeks before GW, aged about 32, and Mary L, aged 17, were married. So Claude was an illegitimate, firstborn son. Perhaps the illegitimacy haunted him and he did not receive some of the benefits of the second living son, Norris.
Claude’s early life was undoubtedly a struggle, in part because he was illegitimate and ¼ Indian (perhaps), he was not well educated, though he sometimes attended school (his parents were both illiterate). A family tradition has it that Mary Lue stood up to GW in support of Claude when he wanted to attend school. Of Claude’s many siblings, five died in childhood; hence Mary Lue was pregnant a lot and the babies and infants died regularly—death was a frequent visitor to the Largent household.
In the 1900 federal census, he was listed as 10 years old, born in July, 1889–an error. Claude’s father George W. was born August, 1860, in Illinois, as were his parents, and Claude’s mother Mary L., born Oct. 1871 in Arkansas. Her father, about whom little is known, was born in Missouri, and her mother, otherwise unknown, was born in Arkansas. GW in 1900 owned his own farm, and had no mortgage. Mary was mother of 7 children, 4 living. Their place of residence was Washburn, Logan Co., Arkansas.
Claude’s draft registration in 1917 reveals that he was a self-employed farmer, was married with two children under 12. He lists himself as Caucasian. He was medium height, slender, brown eyes, black hair in June 5, 1917.
Claude and Bess had four children: Marie, born in 1913; George Amos, born in 1915; Joyce, born in 1919, and Wanda June, born in 1928.
In the 1920 federal census, Claude and Bessie and three children—Marie, Amos, and Joyce—were living in Center Haskell, Oklahoma on the road between Stigler and Keota. Claude was a farmer who owned his own home with a mortgage.
Claude was ambitious enough to educate himself so that he could eventually serve as a school teacher. His daughter June recalled that “the folks talked about several towns where they lived and Dad taught. I believe Pawnee, Shawnee, and towns around Seminole were some. Dad taught in Oklahoma and Arkansas. I remember them talking about him teaching “up on the mountain” in Arkansas.” This was probably Mt. Home School, established in 1920 on Beaver Mountain, Haskell County, Oklahoma.
Claude Largent
In 1928, they were living in Booneville, Arkansas, where GW lived. GW allowed Claude and family to live in a small shack on his land. June recalls that “Mother talked like she didn’t like him; I don’t remember why. Of course, he didn’t leave Dad anything, and I think he had a lot of land. He also had a lot of kids.” Their youngest daughter Wanda June was born in this shack December 15, 1928.
The 1930 census shows Claude and Bessie living in Seminole County, Econtuchka township, Oklahoma. It reveals that they did not own a farm, rather rented. Claude was a school teacher in Econtuchka.
During the Depression, according to family tradition, “Claude taught school for some $40.00 per month. Walked 10 miles to teach singing lessons during the summer. Sold newspapers in Wewoka. . . . Was not easy, but they made it.” Wewoka is 35 miles from Econtuchka, so either Claude drove to sell newspapers, or the family lived in Wewoka for a time.
Claude moved his family to Stigler in 1934. For a few years they lived in the home of Bessie’s parents, Will and Sula Amos (Will having died, and Sula living in Holdenville). The 1940 census reveals that Claude and Bess continued to live in Stigler, Oklahoma. They rented a home and did not farm. Claude had completed the second year of college, attending Northeastern University in Tahlequah. His son George Amos had completed the third year of college. Claude taught music in a Works Progress Administration school in Stigler, now the Stigler Grade School, at 5th and B streets. Claude and Marie were a singing duo in local Stigler churches. The Largent family were Methodists.
In 1942, they were living in Stigler, Oklahoma; Claude was employed by Claud Frix, who was the proprietor of a retail dry goods store. But that same year Claude, Bess, and June, their youngest child, made the trek of the Okies to California to look for work. They lived in San Diego in 1942, moved back to Stigler, then moved to Santa Monica, California in 1943, living there until 1944. Claude worked in the aircraft industry and in a lumber yard. June attended Santa Monica schools. They returned to Stigler in 1945, and Claude worked as an elementary school custodian while they lived outside of town. Nearby, Claude’s sister Bettie lived near Stigler Lake with her husband Newton McCaslin.
Claude, Bess, and daughter June
The family moved to Tulsa in 1945. Claude worked for the Tulsa Public Schools, Irving and Mark Twain schools, as a custodian. He also worked for a church in Tulsa. They purchased a house in West Tulsa in 1946 with a Teacher’s Credit Union loan. Claude, who didn’t drive, walked just about everywhere to work. Claude daily walked from their home at 3613 W. Admiral Blvd. in Tulsa (in a home that no longer stands) down the street to S. 33rd W. Ave to the grocery store on the Sand Spring Line, now Charles Page Blvd—a walk of a mile.
Claude retired in 1959 from Tulsa Public Schools and spent his time working in a large garden in the backyard where he grew all sorts of vegetables. Every Christmas the entire extended family of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren filled the house and enjoyed Christmas cheer. Claude and Bess had their own easy chairs, from which they could sit and watch television. Claude enjoyed smoking his pipe and Bess enjoyed dipping tobacco. They were both quiet people. Bess, especially, was tough, no-nonsense. Claude’s grandson, Rusty, remembers him as very old, thin, cross-eyed, yet quiet, possibly thoughtful. He wore sun-glasses, even inside, perhaps because of his cross-eyes. Rusty would sometimes join his grandfather in the vegetable garden. Claude said little but walked about gathering the vegetables and pruning branches; Rusty followed, watching. One time, Claude gave Rusty some books without comment. The books were a two-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln by Carl Sandberg. The books appeared well-used, so clearly his grandfather had read them again and again. They must have been his favorite books, and now he was giving them to Rusty—perhaps his grandfather’s wisdom and Carl Sandberg’s wisdom and Abraham Lincoln’s wisdom would combine to provide the sixteen-year-old inquisitor with wisdom itself. And so, despite the fact that most of the books he read were about sports, Rusty began to read. Sandberg’s portrayal of Lincoln was of a humorous, shy, witty, thoughtful, caring, empathetic man who became President of the United States. Rusty’s grandfather had the same body-type, the same apparent demeanor, as Abraham Lincoln, though as far as Rusty knew his grandfather had only been a custodian for his working years. Sandberg’s Lincoln cared for people, for all people of whatever color, and for this care he became a martyr, a sacrifice to the principles of equality and freedom.
Claude had a slight stoke a year or so before he died. “Never the same,” his daughter June recalls. Claude predeceased Bess by three years, dying July 21, 1975. Bess lived for a brief time in a nursing home and died on April 29, 1979.
Claude and Bess, 1967
The descendants of Claude Largent and his ancestors extending back to Jean Largent and Bess Amos Largent and her ancestors extending back to Nicholas Amos continue to live in Arkansas and Oklahoma, and throughout the United States.
As the War for Independence drew to a close in 1783, leaving so much death and destruction in its wake, it gave pause to many thinkers of the time as to the role of God in such affairs: was God’s providence active or a figment of the imagination?
The correspondence of two Christian Enlightenment thinkers of the time, Jeremy Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard, sheds light on the grand questions that faced all Americans at the end of the war. Whence is God? Where is God’s love on the battlefield, in the prison ships, in the sick room, on the death bed?
These questions were uppermost in Ebenezer Hazard’s mind at the end of the war when he ended his bachelor days and married. He had been on the road for a good part of the war, a postal official ensuring good communications for the American Patriots. With war’s end, the cautious Hazard decided it was time to marry and begin a family. But when his wife became pregnant, and she gave birth to a boy, the haunting fear of death, which had been so familiar to him during the war, began to interfere with the joy he felt at the presence of his newborn son. These fears became excruciating when during the summer and fall months of 1784 his son became dangerously ill.
Jeremy Belknap, a clergyman living in New Hampshire, tried to advise Hazard about his fears. Writing at the end of November, particularly in response to Hazard’s mixed feelings of the past months of fear for his son’s life, tremendous love for the boy, and a sense that a more distant attachment to children is best, Belknap had to disagree. Speaking as a friend and pastor, he counseled: “I have no fondness for encouraging parents in making themselves uneasy because they love their children, as if they were in danger of idolizing them. It is natural to love them, it is necessary we should. Reason, prudence, and time will teach us how to set bounds to this fondness; but where is the harm of indulging it, especially at first, when the thing is new? How much more rational to play with a darling child than with a lapdog, or parrot, or squirrel! Let Nature have vent. ‘Enjoy the present, nor with needless cares, Of what may spring from blind misfortune’s womb, Appal the surest hour that life bestows’.”
“I have administered,” Belknap continued, “the same wholesome advice to our good friend the Metropolitan [Joseph Buckminster of Portsmouth], who has the same fears respecting his child. For my part, I think it is an exercise of gratitude to Heaven for its blessings, to enjoy them. As they are sent to sweeten the bitter cup of life, let us taste the sweet, and thank the Giver.”
Hazard, unconvinced, responded laconically three weeks later: “Your advice about loving children is natural, but not prudent; for, in case of their being taken away, the pangs of separation must be in proportion to the strength of the attachment, and that must be very, very, very great.”
For Belknap, the suffering and violence of war taught him to have complete faith in God, to accept all experiences, pain, suffering, even death, with piety and happiness, allowing God’s love to extend even in life’s most bitter moments. Belknap realized during the war that the love of God is limitless, found even during war, even during death. The love of God is ubiquitous, if mysterious.
For Hazard, however, the light of God’s love was dimmed by the experiences of the world, the pain and fears respecting the prospective loss of loved ones: for all of those whom one loves will eventually suffer and die. Hazard had seen the suffering of war during his travels, and it overwhelmed his sense of God’s love. There were too many orphans, too many widows. Sorrow is too much. How can one live life happily when in the next moment, or in the next year, or even in a decade, those whom one has lived life for become ill and die?
The disciple John wrote in his first letter, “perfect love knows no fear.” Hazard, who admitted to Belknap that he often focused on God’s wrath rather than his love, could find little solace in this passage of Scripture. Yet for Belknap the words of John meant everything. Total and complete love vanquishes all fear. Yet who has total and complete love? No one, of course. But it is a goal, a pursuit, and one must make the attempt at such love. To deny love because of the fear of death is to fail in life, and goes against the ways of God, who requires his creation to procreate, to spread love, to enjoy each other.
Belknap eventually was tested in his words and faith, when in 1789 one of his sons became terminally ill and died. Belknap cared for him at the death bed and asked him to commit himself to the love of Christ. He buried his son content that God’s love had triumphed over death: how? This is the mystery of God’s love. How can love allow pain and death? Christ Himself experienced pain and death, yet became triumphant in love. Belknap believed that God was an efficient Creator who would not lose any of His Creation, but all Creation would be embraced in the unrestrained love of God. Death is the moment at which the perfect love of God overwhelms and vanquishes all fear: for the one who passes if not the one who stays, who has to wait, be patient, accept God’s love, and know that in time the transcendent love of God will embrace all the living—at the end.
The Psalmist begins his Psalm 32 in extreme fear. It overwhelms. It incapacitates. How has he come this far, only to be washed over, drowning, in fear. How many times have I uttered in extreme fear? Countless. I figure I am not alone, though when the fear attacks, and I am reeling from it, I feel very alone. The fear attacks my thoughts, and I am disabled by it. I don’t cry out vocally, but in my mind. The Psalmist reached out and sought succor from the Lord, as do I.
Thou art my strength and my refuge . . .
The Psalmist found God, His power, His promises, a recurrent house of refuge, a place to go for safety, for healing, for renewal. All life requires refuge. The challenges of the moment bring about demands for an adequate response of survival in the face of fear and dissolution, the enemies, the predators, the hunger and cold that arise in each and every moment, which force each individual to cry out in despair, to seek the help of the Lord, to retreat into the house of refuge, whether it be an actual or virtual place, of the body or the mind, where the enemy of time and place cannot penetrate and take hold.
Into Thine hands I will commit my spirit . . .
In the face of fear that threatens to shatter me, I will give myself to you, I will surrender to your love. In the quiet of the early morning when I am overwhelmed by images and thoughts I call out to God, and He responds, saying Accept.
God of truth . . .
The refuge of the Lord is truth. God is the absolute, the unwavering, the certain, the fortress of sameness that counters the contingent, the frivolous, the apparent chances of time and place, the falsehoods that dominate the moment. God’s truth is not a temple, or building of any kind, nor a cave, nor a place under the covers where one can hide and shut out fear. God’s truth is the spirit, the essence, that within us that is unchanging, the core of being, that which connects us to God, to the timeless, to Being itself. The challenge is to find it, to recur to it in times of fear.
Thou hast hated them that idly persist in vanities . . .
Contrary to truth are the frivolities of existence that excite, occupy the mind and body, form momentary shelters from the storms of terror. Running from the moment, from truth, hiding in the house of pleasure, the cave of folly, where titillating experiences act as a blinder, earmuffs, a box to retreat into and tape shut to avoid humiliation and pain, the dire straits of time and place. These temporary shelters for the homeless of spirit provide illusory warmth and protection from that which cannot be stopped, from an enemy of time that will break down any vain shelter that is not of the Lord’s.
I am afflicted . . .
How can it be so, when I know You, know Your truth, know Your presence. I am so weak. Where is my strength?
My life is spent with grief . . .
But how could it be so, when my life has been showered with goodness and love? How could I only see grief? Why am I so blinded? How can grief so overwhelm joy?
My bones are troubled . . .
My body aches because of the weight of time that I allow to oppress me, when the years should buoy me up with gladness for the many miracles and joys I have experienced. With age, the mind should overpower the body: why hasn’t it happened for me?
I became a reproach . . . and a fear to mine acquaintance . . .
So I imagine, and assume, that who would want to be near me who clouds the bright sun of love and hope with images of misery and doom.
A broken vessel . . .
I am cracked throughout. I seek mending.
They were gathered together against me . . .
Notwithstanding great words, wondrous thoughts, the Psalmist, like so many others, found emptiness, loneliness, uncertainty, staring him in the face. Time washed over the Psalmist constantly taking away resolutions and faithfulness. Doubt submerged him, fear overwhelmed him. And after feeling God’s nearness and wonderment he felt, in the next instant, nothing: affliction, pain, impoverishment, reproach; he was frightened, broken, censured, and plotted against.
My lots are in Thy hands . . .
All the Psalmist could do, in such times of despair, was give his lot, his time, the future, to God, place his past, present, and future into God’s hands and say, Here God, here I am, I put myself in your hands, I put my soul, my fate, my sin, my weakness, my folly, in your hands. Do what you will with them. Complete surrender. What else can a person do? If grand theories, and great philosophies, and the wisdom of the past, and the sublime words of preachers, had any effect, any staying power, then the affliction would vanish, the fear would subside, and peace and contentment would take the Psalmist to a new place.
How abundant is the multitude of Thy goodness . . .
If only I would recognize the good, ponder my blessings rather than the imaginary evil. Why won’t my mind, my thoughts, work for joy rather than sorrow?
Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee . . .
I fear everything, save God. I have it all wrong, opposite. I must go the opposite way. Fear God, not everything else that flutters about in the wind, bubbles that pop as soon as they pass by.
Thou wilt screen them in a tabernacle . . .
The new place, God’s shelter, His tabernacle in the words of the Psalmist, is where contentment and peace are found, but only for a moment. Then another moment comes, and the fear returns, and the despair and the hopelessness. But how wonderful is God, that the tabernacle is always open, a place of refuge always there, always apparent, in thoughts, in deep contemplation, in going within to find God’s peace.
In extreme fear . . .
Childlike, under God’s protection, the Psalmist, like myself, still cries out in extreme fear, an infant needing the succor of God’s blessings.
The Lord seeks for truth . . .
There is no falsehood in God, no deception in God’s tabernacle, no uncertainty in the refuge of the Lord. Time will not stand still, until death, when the frivolity, fear, absurdity, expressed so many times by the Psalmist, comes to an end, and there is a new beginning: of peace, contentment, sameness, certainty, truth, love.
Be of good courage.
Courage comes from embracing the Lord, embracing God’s love, and not slinking away from the consequences of love, which can instill utter fear. Love is not an easy path. Love is challenging. It brings despair. But it counters loneliness. And it is through love that a person discovers God.
“Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection.”[1]
The Logos is the force of life. When John wrote the words, He through whom all things are made, he meant that the Logos is the mediator between the Creator and Life.
Yet, in remarkable blindness and arrogance of “tyrannical anthropocentrism,”[2] humans now and have for millennia considered themselves the masters of creation. For hundreds of thousands of years—a period lost in time, far beyond the power of human memory to recall—humans have fought the war of survival against other creatures, and slowly emerged victorious, in apparent control. Yet humans are themselves animals and have throughout recorded human history displayed the characteristics of what they disparagingly called brutes: savagery, instinctual competition, bloodlust, mercilessness—anything to survive. The battle to live results in the death of the other. Humans, like all animals, learned that to survive required the extermination of the enemy. The enemy could be large and ferocious, an individual creature that could alone fearlessly face many humans in conflict: such as a tiger, lion, shark, or bear. More often, the enemy was small, individually insignificant, yet collectively powerful, lethal: swarms of insects could cause greater destruction than a pride of lions or a pack of wolves. Death has always been the great equalizer. Nature does not appear to select one above another life: all life is equally at the mercy of the forces of nature, of disease, of predators, of conflict. A lion is equal to a human in the chance for survival. Matching the lion’s hunting prowess, guile of the predator, and strength, is the human’s prowess with tools, guile of the prey, and ability, through use of reason, to adapt to a given situation. Although different animals use tools in a rudimentary fashion, humans contrive tools to different challenges of survival, share tools in community, and manufacture sophisticated forms of technology. Long ago human tool users slowly tipped the balance of the equality of nature.
So began the reign of humans as the self-appointed masters of all creation. Humans hurt, injured, destroyed, tortured, all creatures, including other humans, to serve the particular interests of the individual or group. This mentality of domination is found in all human cultures, past and present. Humans learned from other humans how to use, control, exploit, overwhelm, destroy. Befitting the sense of superiority of the human over all other creatures, the power exercised was often spontaneous, frivolous, purposeless. Destruction was a by-product of dominance; death was a random act upon a perceived insignificant creature.
Creatures of the Earth have existed, according to this anthropocentric view, to serve humans in all matters of life and culture: food, work, entertainment, religion. Yet fundamental scriptures of the world’s philosophies and religions provide clear guidelines, which contradict self-congratulatory human power, on how humans should treat other creatures. The implication in the Old Testament book of Genesis, Chapter One, is that humans have the moral obligation to treat all things, all of existence, as good, to cherish, to embrace, to love, to preserve. In Genesis, Chapter Two, humans arrogantly disobey God, take the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and as a consequence suffer humiliation, pain, and death. Human arrogance, to determine our own destiny, to seek more knowledge than is good for us, than is consistent with the goodness of Creation, is wrong. But this lesson is of course the teaching of world philosophies: hubris is the key to self-destruction. Skeptical Greeks such as Aeschylus condemned hubris as inconsistent with the power of the divine. The wise laughed at the human pretension to know. The poet of Ecclesiastes argued that in much wisdom is much sorrow. In Plutarch’s “On the Use of Reason by ‘Irrational’ Animals,” he questioned whether human existence was more valuable than the existences of other creatures. Michel de Montaigne, the great skeptical mind of Renaissance Europe, who wrote witty, critical essays questioning human reason, wondered when he played with his cat, who was actually in control, he or the cat? In the Creator’s eyes, whose life is more important? Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, though the scientific revolution was convincing humans of their ability to figure everything out, could not help but realize that human knowledge was dependent upon Elder Scripture, the wonderful works of the Creator—so that Cotton Mather pointed out that even the miracle of a simple fly contradicts the arguments of an atheist.
As increasing knowledge in the physical and life sciences began to move more people away from the old ideas about human hubris and dependency upon Providence, there continued to be thinkers and writers who challenged the rising arrogance of humanity. Living at a time during which human activities were having such an impact on nature as to bring about the extinction of animal species, the English naturalist Thomas Nuttall wondered in his many books why humans believed they had the right to discontinue the lives of any beings of the “feathered race.” His view is echoed today by Pope Francis, who writes: “We read in the Gospel that Jesus says of the birds of the air that ‘not one of them is forgotten before God’. . . . How then can we possibly mistreat them or cause them harm?” A profound and religious American Indian writer, Alexander Posey, wondered if the simple beauty of a flower such as a daffodil was less significant than human actions and concerns. In the wake of the expansion of human power worldwide, the naturalist John Muir wandered about the coasts and mountains of California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska, empathizing to such a degree with all God’s creatures as to see beauty and significance—and the right to live—even in those creatures that humans feared most, such as the rattlesnake.
Even so, the 20th and 21st centuries have seen humans reveling in their superiority over other creatures, mass-producing slaughter of countless individuals of countless species, disregarding the teachings of centuries that warned that such hubris could have disastrous consequences. One scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, discovered this when he watched his creation, a plutonium atomic bomb, explode with the apparent force of the sun on a summer day in 1945. He could not help but conclude that he had become death, the destroyer.
Human power has increased yearly since 1945 with predictable consequences in terms of environmental change and the wholesale destruction of life, both human and other creatures. But if humans are advanced over other creatures, as we think, should not then humans act in such a way that human civilization means something besides the exercise of human power? Civilization should have something to do with taking the lead among all creatures to preserve and protect life: humans must turn back to the old philosophies, the old ways, of respecting life, recalling those thinkers who have advocated the idea that all life is to be respected and protected, and live in harmony with each other, and all other creatures.
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” Jesus’s comments in Mark differ from those in Matthew, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” Mark uses the Greek word, “ktisis,” literally meaning “creature” or “creation.” Mark uses the word on several occasions, always meaning creation, implying the beginning as described in Genesis chapter one. The word can mean as well all things or beings, the whole or a part, the many and the one. Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans, 1, 20, uses the word to imply the creation as a historical whole, from the beginning to the end, including the present. In the Epistle to the Colossians, 1, 23, Paul refers to the Gospel being proclaimed to “all creation under heaven” in the same manner as Mark.
In Hebrews: 4, 13, the word ktisis refers to creature: “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” This passage enlightens us as to what Jesus meant by the creation, which includes all creatures. Likewise, in Revelation, 5, 13, John’s vision includes “every creature” in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the seas, singing “to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power for ever and ever.” In Luke, 19, 40, Jesus tells the Pharisees that even if humans at the excitement of the Son of Man coming were silenced, “the stones will cry out,” an explicit reference to the idea that “through him all things were made” includes more than just living things.
But how does one preach to all creatures, to the whole creation? In the Great Commission to his disciples and followers Jesus commanded them to care for all of God’s creatures, even bringing the Good News of God’s love to all members of God’s Creation. The ability to love each individual form of life in the Creation is what Jesus had in mind in preaching the gospel to the whole creation.
The ancients, at the time when the Gospel accounts were written, thought of the creation as involving a physical as well as a spiritual component. Philosophers expressed this as the chain of being. The chain involved the spiritual levels of incorporeal beings as well as physical levels of corporeal beings. There was a sense of a rank, an orderly hierarchy of existence that would never change. There was no sense, as in later centuries, of movement, of evolving, of change from one level to another. Change occurred within time, from birth to death, but not in and among the different levels of life. If the Creation, ktisis, therefore includes all beings in a hierarchical arrangement, then Jesus’s words, His commission, is meant to reach all beings, all creation, from first to last, from top to bottom.
The Great Commission, then, outlined in Mark, calls upon humans to embrace all creation, not just other humans, in the love of God, which encompasses the entire creation, not just humanity—only when humans realize that we are part of something greater than ourselves rather than the means as well as the end, will we be able to turn back the clock on environmental destruction and ecological chaos, to fully preach to the Creation God’s message of Love.
[1] Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter on Humans and God’s Creation, Laudatum Si, On Care for Our Common Home.
“Lord God of the High Places,” Abraham called the Lord. God dwells on high, which is a metaphor for any place that stands out: a mountain, a city, a temple, a soaring place among our hopes and dreams. God from on high looks upon us and blesses us.
Glorious things have been spoken of thee, O City of God . . .
Such was the title of St. Augustine’s book, The City of God. The earthly city, the city of concrete, will someday become shaken, become rubble. The City of Man, as St. Augustine wrote, is doomed to destruction. Such is the way of concrete, of buildings, of human artifice. But there is a part of us that is not built, rather is, not artificial, rather natural. We are born with it, and it is with us throughout life, even until and after death. This, Augustine called the City of God, which is the abode of hope, of peace, of trust, of love. This is the abode of God, for God is love. God is not built. God is not contrived. God is. And God is, throughout all times and places. If we accept the presence of God, and see that disasters are not disasters, rather a part of God’s will, part of God’s overall scheme of love, then we will be at peace, and truly not fear.
Augustine told his readers of his relationship with God of the High Places based on his experiences of doubt, frustration, sorrow, and apostacy. Augustine found God in the smallest, most humble venue, and yet it was as if he had stood on the highest mount when he heard God call him. A citizen of the City of God, Augustine wrote, is anyone who puts their faith in, fears, the Lord, and humbly submits to His will: these can be people from any place: Philistines, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Asians, Europeans, Americans, or people from North Africa, as was Augustine. Place of birth and residence have little to do with citizenship in the City of God.
The Lord shall recount it in the writing of the people, says the Psalmist.
God keeps tabs on us, He enrolls us in His census, He finds a place for us, all who claim citizenship in the City of God. The writings of those who work for God’s purpose, who submit their writings to the ultimate prose and verse of God, claim citizenship in God’s City.
The dwelling of all within thee is the . . . dwelling of those that rejoice . . .
I dwell in the City of God when I commit my life to God and allow my thoughts and feelings to be put to the service of God.
In 2017, an elementary school librarian in Massachusetts criticized a gift of Dr. Seuss books from then First Lady Melania Trump as being “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.” A school district in Virginia claimed that “Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr. Seuss.” This from a PBS article.
Was, therefore, Dr. Seuss a racist?
NBC published a piece, “Why Dr. Seuss got away with anti-Asian Racism for so Long,” proclaiming that “Dr. Seuss, the pen name for Theodor Seuss Geisel (who died in 1991, at 87), . . . perpetuated harmful Asian stereotypes in a series of political cartoons. From 1941 to 1943, he published more than 400 cartoons for the New York newspaper “PM,” many of which displayed anti-Japanese racism during World War II.”
From a historical point of view, Dr. Seuss, Theodore Giesel, was part of U. S. propaganda against particularly Japan during WWII. But then, after Pearl Harbor, and hearing about death marches and other atrocities, Americans viewed the Japanese as Americans today view terrorists such as the Islamic State and Al Quaeda: as a people who fail the commonly accepted standards for what is just and true. Yes, Dr. Seuss and almost every other American thought ill about the Japanese and sometimes caricatured them in non-too flattering ways.
After the war, Dr. Seuss, through his books, became a champion against hatred, fighting for the moral values that the U.S. stood for after WWII: peace, truth, justice, equality.
In retrospect, I don’t approve of Dr. Seuss’s wartime racial caricatures, but I understand why he drew them during that time in history, just as I understand why artists today might caricature terrorist fighters.
Educators should use Seuss’s example as a teaching moment to inform students that the historical perspective does not give us the right to judge people’s attitudes in the past.
The American Plutarch 