Randolph Lawson, Veteran of the American Revolution and Southern Appalachian Farmer

Posted on May 17, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

Like many early Americans, the story of Randolph Lawson’s full life is very unclear for the historian of today. It is not known precisely when and where he was born, precisely who his parents were, and precisely who his children were. Although he was a veteran of the American War for Independence, fighting in the southern colonies against the British, his precise actions during the war are lost to time.

Randolph Lawson was born, perhaps, in November 1752 in Cumberland, North Carolina. Other sources put his birth in 1757 or as late as 1765. But in a court appearance in 1835 he told the court he was 82, having been “born in Cumberland Co, NC in the fall or winter of 1752.” His father, perhaps, was Bartholomew Lawson and his mother was Susannah Simpkins. Bartholomew Lawson possibly died in Cumberland County, North Carolina, in 1765 or in Lundenberg Virginia in August, 1782.

Randolph’s siblings included his older sister Elizabeth, who married George Rogers, a younger sister Susan, who was born in 1755 and married Moses Carrick (1750-June 17, 1826); Moses Carrick lived in Pennsylvania during the War for Independence; he was a corporal in the continental army; he moved to Kentucky and died in Tennessee.

Another of Randolph’s siblings was John, who was two years older than him. John was born in 1750 in Cumberland County, North Carolina and died January 4, 1838, at Morgan County Tennessee. John was a Revolutionary War veteran like Randolph. Randolph was present at his older brother John’s wedding to their cousin Anna Lawson in January 1775. They were married in Stokes County, in north central North Carolina, at the home of John Heart by a minister named Newman.

Other siblings included veteran of the Revolutionary War Morman I., born 1751. Morman also served in the War of 1812 as a corporal. Another brother, William, was a Second Lieutenant in the Virginia Continental troops during the Revolutionary War. Elisha, another brother, was born about 1753; he died in 1834. Brother Jacob was born in 1761, and died in 1832 in Hawkins Co, Tennessee. Brother Peter Lawson was born in 1758 and died in 1834.

When the War for Independence broke out, many of the Lawsons participated on the Patriot side. Randolph served in 1780 and 1781 in battles in North Carolina and South Carolina. In court testimony fifty-five years later, Randolph recalled that he enlisted as a militia soldier in July 1780 under a Captain Coke (or Cox) under the command of a Colonel Knowles. “They then marched toward Camden,” he remembered, “near which place they met Gen. [Horatio] Gates by whom they were then commanded and soon after were engaged with Lord Rawdon in the Battle of Camden, sometime in Aug 1780. This applicant was not actually engaged in the battle being detached as a guard of the baggage in which the Americans scattered and appeared by the conduct of the Militia.” The battle was a horrible loss for the patriots. The record continues: “They did not get together to effect any thing again during this term of 3 months. He did not receive any discharge from this tour of 3 months and there was nothing more of any interest or possible during this tour of service. He again entered service as a volunteer for a tour of six months sometime in Jan. or Feb. 1780 under Capt. Duck. He thinks under the same Col. [Knowles]. He does not recollect where they rendezvou[s]ed but when organized, they marched on toward Guilford Court House where they Met Gen. [Nathaniel] Green, who commanded them and where they had an engagement with Lord Cornwallis and were again defeated. This applicant was not again actually engaged being young was again on detached duty as a guard of the baggage. After the battle, General Green marched on toward Camden, where he attacked Lord Rawdon, sometime in April, but this applicant under the command of this same field officers and he thinks commanded by General [Charles Henry] Lee was sent on a different expedit[i]on, in which, however, he had no engagement, that he recollects, nor does he recollect for anything further being done or transpiring of interest during this term of six months. He was discharged however, 2 weeks before the expiration of this tour of six months, having served 5 months and 2 weeks, making in all eight months and 2 weeks. He received a written discharge from this last tour of six months.”


As an old man living in Tennessee and Kentucky, Randolph was attempting to secure a pension for his revolutionary war service, which required proof that he has served six months. In another court record from May 1842, Lawson, “a resident citizen now of Clinton Co., KY, age 90, said that he volunteered under Capt. Gholston, as he yet believes his name to be, he thinks it was in June 1780, for 3 months under Capt. Gholston, or Gordin, is not positive as to the name, but knows the Capt. under which applicant’s father served one tour in the same war, was Gordin but his captain ‘s name was Gholston. He then lived in Cumberland Co., NC and was attached to army command by Gen. Gates.”

His memory being clearly problematic, he was assisted by various old comrades who appeared on his behalf. One, John Parley, “a resident citizen of Wayne Co., KY; states that he was personally acquainted with the soldier in the state of NC and knows that he was a private soldier in the Revolutionary War at the time of the Gates defeat but was not retained in service at that time, the length of the time for which he was engaged, afterwards, he was a volunteer private in the other tours one of which was under Capt. Gholston, attached to Gen. Green’s army, for 3 months and in scouting a company for about 3 months.”

It appears based on these records that Randolph served as a soldier protecting the baggage and as a scout. Why one record indicates that he protected the baggage due to his young age doesn’t make sense, as he would have been 28-29 years old at the time.

Another old comrade appeared on his behalf: the “Affidavit of Thomas Phillips, resident of Campbell Co., TN, who states that he and the soldier were both residents of Cumberland Co., NC and well recollects that in the year 1780, and knows that he now lives in the south edge of KY and volunteered under Capt. Cox, and was in the Revolution and hence it was sometime before Gates’s defeat and that shortly after the defeat he returned home and knows that in the later part of the season of the fore part of 1781, he again went into service under Capt. Gholston in Col. Alston’s regiment and was . . .  army and was back at Camden or scouting expeditions for sometime and then returned home to Cumberland Co., NC – affiant being now age 75 and not far from the age of Applicant. Affiant has been acquainted with the Lawson family for many years, from his first recollection, having married an own cousin to the applicant for pension, Randolph Lawson. Signed – Thomas Phillip.”

Another affidavit by Willis Cole “states, he was personally acquainted with Randolph Lawson, who is now of KY when the said Lawson resided in NC and knows he was in the Revolutionary War, sometime under Gen. Gates. Then in 1781, served under Capt. Golston, attached to Gen. Green’s army and was engaged for 3 months in actual service of his affiant’s certain knowledge. Although he did not belong to said company and again in the Summer of 1781, was again in service. Afterwards believes he served 3 different campaigns, the 2 last was under Gen. Green and affiant believes and has no doubt that in the 2 campaigns that Randolph Lawson served full six months in the Revolutionary War, called out by the Capt. Authority that an emboided corp and in his acquaintance with Lawson after the war, he frequently heard Lawson state that he served 3 tours of 3 months each, but has not seen him for many years, until lately. This affidavit was made in Fentress Co., TN.”

The testimony was deemed inconclusive, and Randolph never received a pension.

Randolph married Susannah Cross on 13 June 1791 in Patrick County, Virginia. Randolph and Susannah were reputedly the first couple to be married in Patrick County, a newly formed county in mountainous southern Virginia.

The marriage contract reads:

“Know all men by these presents that we Randolph Lawson and Jacob Lawson of Patrick County are held and firmly bound unto the Govourner of the state of Virginia and his Successors for the time being in the sum of Fifty Pounds to which payment well owed Truly to be made we do bind ourselves our . . . firmly by these sealed with our seals and dated this 13th day of June 1791.”

“Whereas this is a marriage depending & by Gods permission . . . intended between the above bound Randolph Lawson & Susanah Cross. The bond action of the above Obligation is such that of these is no lawful cause to Obstruct the said Marriage. Thus the above Obligation to be read else to remain in full force . . . . Signed sealed and delivered in the Presents of Sam Shaples. Randolph Lawson his mark. Jacob Lawson his mark.”

The bondsman was Jacob Lawson, Randolph’s brother. The bond was an early American institution by which the man declared his intent to marry and was so serious that if any objection came forward before the nuptials he would forfeit the bond money.

Over the course of their marriage Randolph and Susannah had eleven sons and thirteen daughters. One of those sons (probably) was Maxwell Lawson, a farmer of Tennessee and Arkansas.

The young couple after their marriage moved to Montgomery County, Virginia, living there until 1797. Here they had their first child, Elizabeth “Millie”, born June 10, 1786. She would marry Joseph Phillips and would die in Scott County, Tennessee in 1838. Their second child, Lakey Kattie, was born in 1792; she married Thomas Chambers and died in 1838 in Scott, Tennessee. Lakey’s twin sister Lucretia “Lucy” married Blackburn Thompson and moved to Wesley Arkansas along with some of her siblings. Other children: Elisha was born in 1793 and died in 1870; Sophia was born in 1794 and died in 1880; Mary Louis was born in 1797 and died in 1870. Randolph and Susannah relocated to Hawkins County, in eastern Tennessee. They bought one hundred acres in the Puncheon Camp Valley, on Clinch River. Puncheon Camp is in northeast Tennessee about forty miles south of the Cumberland Gap. This was near Hawkins and Campbell counties, Tennessee. Here, daughter Maggie was born in 1800. She would die young in 1812 in Campbell County. Also at Puncheon Camp their son Maxwell was born, on May 5, 1802. Possibly Maxwell had a twin brother, Randolph, who died in 1870. Here also, Randolph, Sr, became embroiled in some sort of religious conflict at the Big Springs Baptist Church. The church records for October 2, 1802 state: “The report from Rob Camp and thought not proper that Randolph Lawson’s name should be made record til he cleared himself of a charge against him.” What were these charges? Often people who broke one of the commandments had to face their accusers. Sometimes the drunk and disorderly did as well. However, the church records for December 2, 1802 state: “Released Randolph Lawson from the charges lodged against him.”

Two weeks later, on December 18, 1802, Randolph received a grant of 500 acres from the State of North Carolina. The record reads: “Know that we have granted unto Randolph Lawson Five hundred Acres of land in our Eastern District on Poor Valley and waters of Holston River.” North Carolina granted land in the claimed territory of what is today eastern Tennessee to veterans at the end of the war in the 1780s. Whether this was the case respecting the land grant to Randolph Lawson almost twenty years later is unknown. This land was located in the Eastern District of Poor Valley Creek on the Holston River in Hawkins County, TN.

It was around this time, according to Randolph’s 1838 court testimony, while living in Hawkins County, that “his house was burned and all papers destroyed.”

This tragic event must have precipitated the move to Campbell County, perhaps in 1803. The family stayed in Campbell County for twenty years. Here, their son Thomas Andrew was born in 1803. He lived in Campbell County but eventually moved to Erath County Texas, where he died in Feb. 1891. He was married to Nancy Jeffers. Also in Campbell County their daughter Clary (Clarissa) was born in 1812. She married William Jeffries, and died in 1897 in Barry County, Missouri. Son Madison Addison was born in 1814 and would die in 1870. Their last child Milton was born in 1820.

A Tennessee land record still exists that indicates that Randolph’s brother William granted him one acre of land in 1811:

“The State of Tennessee To all to whom these presents shall come greetings that in of an entry made in the office of the surveyor of the fourth district of number 758 dated the 15th day of November, 1810 founded on a certificate of number 28 issued by the register of East Tennessee to Micajah Cross for four hundred acres of land dated the fifth day of January, 1810 fifty acres of which are assigned by Cross to William Lawson and one acre by William Lawson to Randolph Lawson. There is granted by the said state of Tennessee unto the said Randolph Lawson and his heirs a certain tract a parcel of land containing one acre lying in the county of Anderson in the district of Hamilton on Paint Creek waters of the New River beginning at a hickory and buck on the south side of the buck thence north forty four east sixteen poles to a white oak north forty six west poles to a dogwood south forty four west sixteen poles to a spruce pine then south forty six east ten poles to the beginning of survey September 16th, 1811 with the and appurtenances to have and to hold the said tract or parcel of land with its appurtenances to the said Randolph Lawson and his heirs forever. In witness whereof Willie Blount, Governor of the State of Tennessee hath here unto set his hand and caused the oath of the said state to be affixed at Nashville in the day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirteen.”

Another Tennessee land record reads:

“State of Tennessee Campbell County Scale 100 poles [16.5 feet] to the inch By virtue of an entry no. 189 dated the 12th day of Aug, 1824, I have surveyed for Randolph Lawson twelve acres land including a part of his improvement where he now lives on Paint Rock Creek in said county beginning on a weeping willow tree standing yard and running thence north 180 east 40 poles to a stake in his old line in his field north 54° east 6 poles to a maple and sweet gum South 46° east 41 poles to a stake South 18° west 47 poles to a stake thence North 46~ west 46 poles to the beginning as represented by the plat-surveyed 30th August, 1824.”

And another:

“I do certify that by virtue of an entry made in the entry taker office of Campbell county, Tennessee No,301 dated January 27, 1826 I have surveyed for Randolph Lawson twenty five acres of land in said county on the waters of Paint Rock Creek beginning at a white oak near the top of a ridge running east 64 poles to a chestnut thence north 64 poles to a stake and beginning as represented in the annex plat surveyed the 4th day of September, 1805. Henry Thompson-scc Mark Richardson __ Robert Jeffers-scc Surveyor cc 25 acres-scale 80 poles inch.”

The land purchased on Paint Rock Creek is in the vicinity of the modern town of Huntsville, Tennessee.

In the 1830 federal census for Campbell County, Randolph’s family was listed as: one free white male, age 15-19, one free white male, age 60-69, one free white female, age 10-14, one free white female, age 15-19, one free white female, age 40-49. He lived next door to his son Thomas Lawson, who had six people living in his family. This census was in error, as Randolph was 78 in 1830 and Susannah was 65. The young male was perhaps Milton. The teenage female was perhaps Clarissa. The young teenage female, perhaps a relative.

Two doors down was Robert Lawson, two people living there, and next door to Robert was Blackburn and Lucretia Lawson Thompson, with ten people in their family. Down the way was Samuel Lawson, two people in his family. Thirty lots away was Maxwell and Anna Lawson, with seven people in their family. There was also son Elisha Lawson nearby.

In the 1840 federal census, Clinton Kentucky, the Randolph and Susanna Lawson household had one free white male, 20-29, one free white male 80-89, two free white females, 5-9, one free white female, 30-39, and one free white female, 60-69. Their next-door neighbor was son Elisha with a family of seven. The census taker made an error in Susannah’s age; she was 75. The young male was perhaps Milton. The two young females were perhaps grandchildren.

In his 1838 court testimony Randolph claimed that he left Campbell County, Tennessee, “in the fall of 1832. Two men had been talking to him about securing a pension, but having sold out and was preparing the move to Illinois, with his children he knew anything of the matter and had no chance to stay and attend to the business, he decided to move on have his business attended to where he settled. Accordingly, moved to Johnson Co., IL, and there became sickly and having no old acquaintance nor no chance of proving service and after having lived there sometime and concluded to move back and accordingly started back, but on his way concluded to settled in Clinton Co., KY, immediately on the Fentress Co. line in TN, about 60 miles from Campbell on the settlement where he started from and from his extreme old age and bodily infirmity is unable to attend court or attend to business from home and having no acquaintance in Fentress Co., it is most convenient to have his business transacted in Fentress Co., TN.”

Randolph died March 1848 in Albany, Clinton, Kentucky, near the border of Tennessee, where he was buried. Susanna had preceded him in death by four years, in 1844.

Tennessee land sale to Randolph Lawson, 1832

For a complete history of Randolph Lawson and his descendants, see my history of the Lawsons of the American South, published by Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G9RDT3PF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36PPTM7BCTC2Z&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cqGw_xgnYBNRNQQZ3VVlDTDuoYsfRKxj_sIIwKXnNqz3Sc9Q0z_tRe-gXhSqrYuSiTeWVpdkbeR0UsauvA-pdRwLV29G0a8HbEi3x-NPsvfHRuI9MFZ7xnvafLMgxAVJDSsu9Aup3YrsJkFIqa3HntEFmdb1m36V2e5Jki2B2VORJ0fxrcOagNlw1y07G0_Z83CLGFv4t6Dyfi3RuXu6coGUAjCvcSesMxcQDkon0yc.r7TvUj2h-Yky7rx02rNzQHuEsw1e1NIPpuyyyQjelbo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Russell+Lawson&qid=1766343535&s=books&sprefix=russell+lawson%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-1

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The American Southern Hill Country Personality

Posted on May 7, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

The Southern hill country personality type is a reticence towards others, even a reticence toward life, a suspicion about others, really a suspicion about everything, being afraid to commit, being afraid to take action, waiting, accepting—accepting not so much God, awaiting the will of God, as accepting because of unwillingness to act, to take a chance. And so life can pass by and one sits and waits, stifled by inaction, stifled by indecision, until finally something forces movement. Movement may be caused by hunger, or fear, some outside force that impels the person to do what he might not otherwise have done. The consequent movement, action, might be absurd, completely out of character, yet circumstances have brought about this action, this movement, and the person goes blindly along, not sure, waiting even while moving, passive even while in the process of acting, faithless even while seemingly throwing all aside in an act of blind faith.

Emotions, likewise, are restricted, because one is unsure how to express them. How does one express love toward another when one is unsure, and reticence is the typical response to everything in life. How can one feel excitement, feel love, feel wonder, feel happiness, in an uncertain world where inaction, waiting, watching, seems the most comfortable approach to life? Rocking in the chair on the porch, waiting—for what? For nothing really, just waiting. Perhaps just waiting for death, waiting for everything to finally come to an end. Waiting for the boredom to end. Waiting for the failure to end. Waiting to be released from the stifling inaction and uncertainty and hopelessness and faithlessness.

The Southern hill country personality is outwardly pious, but inwardly barren. Outwardly such people belong to a church, believe in God, say the proper grace at meals, sing the proper hymns, but without emotion, without feeling, because religion is something not to express emotion over; to express love for God is just as uncomfortable as to express love for another, a child, a relative, a parent. It is embarrassing.  

Thank God for radio and television, by which one can submerge inaction and lack of confidence and the endless waiting for who knows what into a fantasy world of action, of love, of certitude, of confidence, of knowing exactly what to do, of taking life and directing it according to one’s will. How relieving to be able to watch a program, watch others, who are doing what you are unable, unwilling, to do, but you can watch along as they do it, and feel the satisfaction of a life well lived even if it is not your own.

Such crutches are everywhere, to help one limp along in life. If not television, if not the internet, then booze, or pills, or gambling, or something that takes one’s mind away from what is, to focus on what could be, what might be, and so lose oneself in a stupor, a fantasy world where one is exactly what one is not, where one is a great actor, a great mover, a great lover, a wealthy dynamic mover and shaker, a confident person wrestling with life and winning the match time and again.

What happens to you if all of a sudden chance (or destiny) steps in and wrestles  you away from such a life, and you are brought into an awareness of something completely different, a different approach to life, whether it be due to the northern urban personality or some sort of personality in which the fire has been lit, and there is no embarrassment, and a person acts, sometimes foolishly, sometimes in failure, but acts just the same. What is it to put aside inaction to grasp an opportunity and do it? How can the southern hill personality abide by such a notion? Perhaps there becomes a contest of different personalities, different approaches to life, and a person is caught in between, and the personality conflict rages within, the genes of the past confronting the newness of the present, and the split personality results in internal chaos. North and south meet, action and inaction, arrogance and humility, certainty and uncertainty, willingness and unwillingness, and the split personality is torn in so many directions, between choice and non-choice, action and inaction, moving and waiting, doing and watching, accepting life as opportunity or accepting life as struggle.

How can life be both opportunity and struggle, action and inaction, doing and waiting, getting up and sitting down, embracing and distancing, feeling emotion and fearing emotion, loving but being embarrassed by love?

Northern Yankees and Southern hill people: two different ways at looking at life. One is more accepting, but still has the same fears and trepidations as others, but masks the fears in the formalities and structures of urbanized living—the associations or gessellschaft of modern society. The other is suspicious of such formalities, befitting a more rural people; the fears and trepidations of life are often dealt with not by masking them in formalities, rather by submerging them in the informalities of a more community existence: plain speaking, suspicion of others outside of one’s typical familiarity, a rough appearance to the world to show “ain’t scared,” even if you are.

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Squirrel Dance

Posted on April 23, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

Jumping about the trees

Swinging from branch to branch

A daredevil on the elm and maple.

Taunting gravity, death;

And the dogs on the ground,

Look upon him, track him,

Waiting.

A young one, not as adept at the game–

The domesticated predator watches.

He jumps from the trunk, runs madly for the next one.

Jaws of death surround him.

He breathes his last.

I take him to the forest,

Lay him down for his long rest,

Returned to his Maker.

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Clinton Dan Stackhouse Jr., (1923-2009), World War II Veteran of the War in Europe

Posted on February 17, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

Clinton Dan Stackhouse Jr. was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and died in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the course of his long life he served in the Army Air Corps throughout World War II in Europe. After the war he was an auto then an airline mechanic, and served as an inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration. He was a lifelong member of the Church of Christ.

Dan’s father, Clinton Dan Stackhouse Sr., was born in 1900 in Sarcoxie Missouri. His mother Eva Bryant, born in Arkansas, lived in Okmulgee when she married Dan Sr. in 1921. Dan Sr. was a traveling salesman, hence the family moved about a lot. In the 1930s, for example, the family resided in several towns in Missouri. In 1940, when Dan Jr. was seventeen years old, the family lived in Tulsa. Dan went to and graduated from Central High School in Tulsa. He dated a girl who also attended Central, and who lived down the street, Chloe Elenora Lawson, daughter of William and Martha Lawson.

Dan was working as an auto mechanic when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Dan enlisted eleven days later, Dec 18, 1941; he traveled to Oklahoma City to enlist. He joined the Army Air Corps. He was stationed at Napier Field Air Base in Alabama. He and Chloe married in April, 1942, and she lived in the married housing with Dan while he trained. When Dan was shipped out to England, Chloe returned to Tulsa to live with her parents.

Dan served as a nose gunner on a B-24 Liberator that flew missions over Europe. The B-24 was the most produced bomber by the US during the war. A nose gunner was an enlisted soldier who handled a high caliber machine gun to protect the plane from enemy fighter planes. On one mission over Germany, Dan’s plane was shot down. He survived and was imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp. Dan somehow contrived to escape as the war was winding down. He was able to reach the Allied lines in Germany.

Dan was discharged on October 21, 1945. He and Chloe lived in Tulsa. Dan worked as an auto mechanic for Fred Jones Ford. They had their first-born child, Dan Michael, in September, 1946. Their second child, Denise Chloe, was born in July 1948 and died at about nine weeks. Dan took a job as an airline mechanic with Spartan Aeronautics in Tulsa. In time he became an inspector with the Federal Aviation Administration. He and Chloe moved to Seattle, where she died in 1976. Dan moved back to Tulsa, remarried, but when he died in 2009, he was buried next to Chloe at Rose Hill Cemetery.

Dan and Chloe, Christmas 1969

For a complete history of Chloe’s family, the Lawsons of the American South, see my new book published by Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G9RDT3PF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36PPTM7BCTC2Z&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cqGw_xgnYBNRNQQZ3VVlDTDuoYsfRKxj_sIIwKXnNqz3Sc9Q0z_tRe-gXhSqrYuSiTeWVpdkbeR0UsauvA-pdRwLV29G0a8HbEi3x-NPsvfHRuI9MFZ7xnvafLMgxAVJDSsu9Aup3YrsJkFIqa3HntEFmdb1m36V2e5Jki2B2VORJ0fxrcOagNlw1y07G0_Z83CLGFv4t6Dyfi3RuXu6coGUAjCvcSesMxcQDkon0yc.r7TvUj2h-Yky7rx02rNzQHuEsw1e1NIPpuyyyQjelbo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Russell+Lawson&qid=1766343535&s=books&sprefix=russell+lawson%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-1

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Maxwell Lawson (1802-1872) and Anna Gray Lawson (1807-1877), Tennessee and Arkansas Pioneers

Posted on February 14, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

Maxwell Lawson (perhaps christened as John Maxwell Lawson) was born in 1802 in Tennessee, but who exactly his parents were is unclear. Maxwell married Anna Gray in 1820, but what her ancestry was (besides her parents) is overall unclear. Maxwell and Anna had 19 children; they lived in Tennessee until the 1830s, when they moved to western Arkansas.

Maxwell was a farmer, initially in northeast Tennessee near the Cumberland Mountains. He did well enough to be able to support a large family and buy land. He must have moved west in part because he sought more opportunity where land was more available and perhaps less expensive.

Maxwell was a Democrat politically and a primitive Baptist religiously.

Maxwell and Anna relocated to Wesley, Arkansas. They bought a house in 1832, which was destroyed or razed, replaced by a two-story house still standing in Wesley that was built by their son William Riley after the Civil War; Maxwell and Anna probably lived in the house at the close of their lives. The house was a southern style house with a broad open veranda-porch. It was situated in the Arkansas forest.

Maxwell and Anna’s children fought for the Confederacy. Maxwell was apparently a captain in the Tennessee militia during the 1830s. There is no evidence that he owned slaves, though his father-in-law, Jacob Gray, who also moved to western Arkansas, owned a few female slaves.

Maxwell’s sister Lucretia married Blackburn Thompson in 1832; he was born in 1791 in Virginia. They moved to Campbell Co Tennessee and had a child Andrew J. Thompson on Oct 7, 1816. Blackburn fought under Jackson in the War of 1812. He and Lucretia moved to Madison Co Arkansas in 1856; he died in 1861.

Maxwell possibly had other siblings as well: Sophia, (1794-1880); James Robert (1803-1871); James Henry (1805-1876); Martin (1820 -?)

Maxwell’s parents were probably Randolph and Susanna Cross Lawson (the other strong candidates are Robert and Anne Goad Lawson). In support of the Randolph and Susanna is a land deed from 1832 that shows that Randolph purchased land in Campbell Co, the same place where Maxwell was born and where he too owned land. There is also a land purchase in the 1820s that shows Randolph Lawson and Maxwell Lawson buying land by New River. Robert Lawson also bought land in Campbell County. He and Randolph were apparently close friends or relatives, and fought together in the Virginia militia during the American Revolution.

Anna’s parents were probably Jacob C. Gray and Mary A. (Polly) Shreeves.

Maxwell seems to have been a big, burly man, very serious, virile, living until age 70. His photographic portrait shows a stern, dignified country man. He does not appear sad, just more of a serious gaze into the hardship of life. A survivor. He had a full head of hair and was generally handsome.

His wife was likewise big, burly, serious, and virile, bearing 19 children and living until she was 70. She was born five years after Maxwell and outlived him by five years. There is a sense of sadness and hardship in her photographic portrait. She appears to have been a beautiful woman with nice features.

Of their children, first born Calvin, 1825 to 1907, was a farmer who fought for the Confederacy. He married Jane Ann Fritts. Both were illiterate. Their second child was Polly, who married a man named Johnson. Their third child was Sarah, born in 1829 and dying in Texas in 1897. She married Clairborne Fritts in 1847. He was a Confederate soldier. Their fourth child, Elizabeth, born in 1830, married Martin Counts. Their fifth child was an unnamed female who died young. Their sixth child, Caroline, born in 1834, married Bud Williams. Their seventh child, David, born 1835, married Bashaby Counts. He was killed in the war. Their eight child, named Miles, died young. Their ninth child, Martha, was born in 1837. Their tenth child was William Riley Lawson, who was a Captain in the Confederate cavalry during the war. He married in 1866 and served as a postmaster and storekeeper in Wesley Arkansas. Their eleventh child, Samuel, born in 1841, married Kesiah Fritts. He was killed May 10, 1865, crossing the Mississippi River, coming home from the war, by bushwackers. Their twelfth child, Matilda, born in 1842, married a man who was killed in the war. Their thirteen child, John, born in 1843, married Mary Burks. Their fourteenth child, Phoebe, married Sam Henson. Their fifteenth child, Calloway, born in 1846, married Elizabeth Jane McElhaney. Their sixteenth child, Freeman, was born in 1848. Their seventeenth child, Nancy, married Zak Templeton. Their eighteenth child, Louisa, was born in 1855. Their nineteenth child, Margaret, married Dave Lucas.

Maxwell and Anna and other family members are buried in a small cemetery outside of Wesley, Arkansas.

For a complete history of the lives of Maxwell and Anna, their ancestors and descendants, see my book published by Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G9RDT3PF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36PPTM7BCTC2Z&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cqGw_xgnYBNRNQQZ3VVlDTDuoYsfRKxj_sIIwKXnNqz3Sc9Q0z_tRe-gXhSqrYuSiTeWVpdkbeR0UsauvA-pdRwLV29G0a8HbEi3x-NPsvfHRuI9MFZ7xnvafLMgxAVJDSsu9Aup3YrsJkFIqa3HntEFmdb1m36V2e5Jki2B2VORJ0fxrcOagNlw1y07G0_Z83CLGFv4t6Dyfi3RuXu6coGUAjCvcSesMxcQDkon0yc.r7TvUj2h-Yky7rx02rNzQHuEsw1e1NIPpuyyyQjelbo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Russell+Lawson&qid=1766343535&s=books&sprefix=russell+lawson%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-1

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A Review of Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on February 4, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

Slaughterhouse Five, written in 1969, is overall an antiwar book in which war so messes with a person that they go in and out of imaginary dreams and experiences, time is totally disoriented, the traditional narrative of life is broken, and all that once seems normal is not.

The author purports at the beginning that he has long aimed to write a book about the experiences of the bombing of the German city of Dresden by Allied forces in 1945 at the end of World War II, but he didn’t know how to go about writing such a book, such a narrative; it is as if to try to write a rational book about so irrational an event is absurd.

So, instead, he writes an absurd book to reflect the absurd reality that he has found himself in. It is a book about a loser who goes to war and is captured by the Germans and abused, is put in a slaughterhouse to work like a slave, is in the meantime kidnapped by aliens and taken to an alien planet where he exists in a zoo so that the aliens can watch him. He is imprisoned, in other words, by these aliens, just as he is imprisoned by the Germans, imprisoned by his memory, imprisoned by his mind, constantly going back to tragic events that he wishes he could forget. His mind is so disordered, that not only does he imagine something as ludicrous as the aliens on Tralfamadore, and his presence there with a porn queen exhibiting sex for the aliens, but he also goes in and out of time, back and forth, whenever and wherever his disordered brain takes him.

In the book there is no sense of morality, or right and wrong, and the behavior of humans is generally disordered and often ludicrous. To treat others with such cruelty is ludicrous. And although Billy is generally an ok guy, not trying to harm anyone, he is constantly being harmed, by not only other humans, but even aliens as well. The order of Western Civilization, based on the order of human reason, God’s will, morality and goodness, and the order of time, its slow linear movement, has completely vanished in a world of hate and destruction, random events, and the overwhelming rule of chance and contingency.

Even though the Tralfamadorians lock him up in a zoo, Billy still is impressed by their philosophy of life, that death is an illusion, that we can experience life anytime we want to, that all of the moments of life are randomly available to us, and hence there is no death as an end to linear time, because linear time doesn’t exist, rather random moments of time exist; hence there is no end, it is all circular and sporadic. But it is godless, amoral, filled with chance and irregularity and senselessness, hence overall absurd. Why would anyone want to exist in such an existence of circular momentary recollection of random events? How can there be any meaning?

But of course there is no meaning. Vonnegut, who experienced the bombing of Dresden, taking refuge in a slaughterhouse while everyone outside was burnt to a crisp, comes out of the war with a sense of meaninglessness. This is what philosophers call the Postmodern, as it comes after the order and regularity of the Modern. The Postmodern is meaningless and absurd, and there is no purpose, no direction, no goodness, no God.

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Vespasian Bradford, London Cook, 1560-1618

Posted on January 7, 2021 by theamericanplutarch

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.

Vespasian’s 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. Their grandson, Richard Bradford, emigrated to Virginia in the 1650s. His great-great granddaughter, Lena Bradford, married James Amos. She is my fifth great-grandmother on my mother’s side. Vespasian is my 11th great-grandfather.

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William Hawkins, 1609-1699, and Margaret Harwood Hawkins, 1612-1687: Early Settlers of the English Colony of Rhode Island

Posted on December 30, 2020 by theamericanplutarch

William and Margaret Harwood Hawkins were among the first English settlers of Rhode Island. William, by trade a glove-maker, was a native of Exeter, England, born in 1609; his parents were William Hawkins and Katharine Gonson. William, Jr, sailed from England in 1634 bound for St. Christopher (St. Kitts). On board the same ship was Margaret Harwood who listed her home as Stoke Gabriel, also in Devonshire, south of Exeter. She was born in Bulmer, Essex, north of London, in 1612. Her father was Thomas; one record said she was a bastard, hence her mother was unnamed.

Whether William and Margaret already knew each other, or romance blossomed onboard the ship to America, is not known. One record suggests the possibility that they did know each other before sailing: “February, 1634, among persons bound for St. Christopher’s who have taken the oath of allegiance before the Mayor of Dartmouth: William Haukins of Exter, Devon, glover about 25 and Margaret Harwood of Stoke Gabriel, Devon, spinster about 22.” A perplexing question is: what were the two young English people doing aboard a ship for the new English colony of St. Kitts? William and Margaret were both young, perhaps strong and able-bodied. The English were recruiting such people to help colonize Caribbean islands, over which the English were competing with the French, Spanish, and Portuguese. St. Kitts was a new English colony in the Caribbean dedicated to sugar production. The work of clearing the tropical jungle of trees and plants, battling hordes of insects and rats, and planting crops such as tobacco and especially sugar was exhausting, and the more people involved the better. Also, there were conflicts with rival French colonists and the native Carib people.

William and Margaret married in 1634, and within a few years relocated to New England. Emigrating, William and Margaret were among those who in 1638 received lots of land in the new settlement of Providence, founded and headed by Roger Williams. The new town was on the western side of a hill on a broad peninsula bordered by the Seekonk river to the east and Great Salt River, or Providence River, to the west. William’s land, which was allotted to him on December 20, 1638, was at the southern edge of the peninsula, or neck, near Mile End Cove. William in 1640 along with his neighbors signed an agreement to form a government.

It would be nice to know how and why a young immigrant to the sugar colony of St. Kitts had moved north with his wife to a new colony in North America just recently founded by Roger Williams—and became a landowner and one of the original stakeholders of the colony at that! Not only were they original proprietors, but William and Margaret were members of the church in Providence. Thriving, William was able to purchase the lands of his two neighbors to the north in the mid-1640s. He was repeatedly made a freeman—meaning a person of property and legal consequence–of Providence.

William and Margaret arrived at a contested region between Anglo-American newcomers and indigenous tribes. Roger Williams had befriended the Narragansett tribe and negotiated with them, and was for decades a supporter of the rights of freedom of conscience and fair-dealing with the American Indians. After the Pequot War of the 1630s, relations between the English and the Narragansetts were tenuous. War returned to New England in 1675: King Philip’s War. The English attacked the professedly neutral Narragansetts, who joined forces with the Wampanoags and Nipmucs; intense warfare in and about Providence followed. Many of the Rhode Islanders fled, but not William and Margaret Hawkins and family. William helped to man the garrison in Providence, notwithstanding the destruction all around. Because he “stayed and went not away” during the conflict, after the defeat of the Indian tribes, in 1677, the colony awarded Hawkins with land taken from the Narragansetts. Indian captives were treated as prisoners of war, often sold into slavery or bound into servitude. English veterans of the war, such as William Hawkins, earned the right to use Indian servants. William and Margaret were significant landowners with a “considerable estate of lands and livestock” and, it appears, a secure labor force, the consequence of his valiant behavior during King Philip’s War. Along with wealth came political status, as William was elected to represent Providence in the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1677 and 1678.

Bond labor was a phenomenon throughout the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies in America. Bondage took many forms: slavery, servitude, apprenticeship. Children and adults, Blacks, Whites, and Indians, were bound to labor for periods of years, sometimes for life. Some colonists were early opponents of slavery in America. Some Rhode Islanders in 1652 requested that slaves serve only a term of years, “as the manner is with the English servants” rather than for life. William Hawkins eventually agreed. He purchased a twenty-year-old slave named Jack from a Barbados plantation owner in 1695. However, four years later he manumitted Jack “to take effect in 26 years from this date” because “he had respect for him.”

The document granting manumission is found in The Early Records of the Town of Providence, vol. 4, pp 71-72:

Be it knowne unto all People by these presents that Whereas I William Hawkins of the Towne of Providence in the Collony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay in New England haveing for Me my heirs & Assignes, Purchased, Procured, bought & obtained of one william Mackcollin of the Island of Barbados, Merchant a certaine Negro man of about twenty yeares of Age, Named Jack to be unto me my heirs & Assignes for Ever, as may appeare by a bill of sale under the sd William Mackcollins his hand & seale, beareing the date the seventh day of June. 1695; But notwithstanding I the sd William Hawkins bought the sd Negro Jack for Ever, yet upon further Consideration & in favour to the said Negro Man Jack (haveing a Respect for him) Doe by these presents: Relinquish, Release, Discharge & for Ever set free from all & all Manner of service or servitude to me, my heirs, Executors, Administrators or Assignes, after he hath by service Compleated the full & just terme of Twenty & six yeares time from & beginning upon the seventeenth day of June last past being in this present 1699; the said Negro Man Jack; And doe injoyne My selfe, my heirs & Assignes after the sd twenty & six yeares as aforesaid be expired never to make any Claime or Demand to the sd negro man Jack by vertue of My said Purchase of him from the said William Mackcollin as abovesd; In wittnes of the Premises I de here-unto set my hand & seale the Eighteenth day of November in the yeare One Thousand six hundred ninety nine.  Signed & delivered in the presence of Tho:Olney senr: and John Whipple junior

By this time, Margaret had died, probably in 1687. The couple had five children: John Hawkins, William Hawkins Jr, Edward Hawkins, Mary Hawkins Blackmar and Madeline Hawkins Rhodes. William died sometime near the end of 1699.

Map showing the original proprietors of Providence in 1640. William and Margaret Hawkins’ land is the third plot up from the bottom.
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And shepherds were tending their sheep at night and behold . . .

Posted on December 18, 2020 by theamericanplutarch

The grinding movement of time toward the end was slow and steady, one day following another, night falling expectantly, darkness ruling the land until the hues of dawn foretold the beginning of a new day like all the others. The beauties of starry nights and rosy dawns were lost amid the suffering and cries of the tortured, ill, and dying. The people could not see that truth and goodness overshadowed the land at dusk and brightened the world with new light. The divine punctuated the sameness of daily toil and disturbed repose. Creation waited expectantly, if humans were blind to the emerging truth surrounding them. The stars appeared ever brighter, the night sky ever clearer, the sounds of night like a choir rejoicing in the arrival of the child. Most people closed their doors and shuttered their windows to the lights and sounds of the night. Some people, however, could not help but see and hear. Shepherds watching over their flocks knew the night sky, watched the progression of stars and constellations, kept track of Orion and the Pleiades, the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, the strange patterns of the wandering planets. They knew the sounds of night, and the sameness of each night, the constancy of creation from season to season. But there was a change to the unending sameness. The constancy of nature was suspended as the timeless entered time. The lights and songs of the night jarred them from their slumber, and they looked in awe, listened intently, to the message told them by the night. A child is born. God is with you.           

            Travelers caught on the road took extra care to keep to the path, letting the stars, which shown brightly in the clear desert air, guide them. Gentle zephyrs whispered among the palms, sycamores, and figs. Those still awake resting after the labors of the day awaited sleep and the new day. Everyone, human and beast, anticipated dawn. In the town, a few feeble lights interrupted the overwhelming darkness. Candlelight and oil lamps cast great shadows upon mothers caring for sick children, feeble old men refusing to sleep, and the anxious despairing over deeds of the past and retribution yet to come. Tavern owners had shut the doors and hostelers closed the gates. Those wanderers needing food and rest were left to fend for themselves.

            The man and woman, having come from afar to fulfill the requirements of the law, arrived after dark. The man was a native of the town, though not a resident, and had known of neither friends nor family who could host him and the woman for the night. The woman was exhausted and about to give birth. Starlight pointed the way to a rustic barn filled with hay and feeding troughs. The woman tried to stifle her fears and the cries of pain as the baby would wait no longer. The man found a bucket and a well, drew water and wet some clothes, and tended the woman the best he could. After a time she made the final push and the baby emerged in a splash of warm fluid from the womb amid cries of anguish and joy. The man cut the cord and gave the naked child to the mother, who wrapped him in clothes to protect him from the cold and held him to her still heaving breast. Soon the cries were stifled and the child slept. The man put the child in the only object resembling a cradle, a manger that he packed with straw. The woman kneaded her womb to try to stop the ongoing cramps.

            In the dead of night the stars shown more brightly, particularly one that seemed to herald for the man the new life brought into the world. Accompanying the apparent brightening of the star were noises caused by the movement of the natural and supernatural. The man heard rapturous singing voices and wondered whence they came. Soon he heard the footsteps and shouts of man, and guardedly asked what they wanted. He could detect trembling in their voices and fear in their faces, glistening from tears. They were shepherds, they said, who were reclining in the surrounding hills, watching over their sheep, when they had been astonished by amazing figures in the sky, glowing ethereally, singing, glorifying God. One of the messengers told them of the miraculous birth of the son of the most high God in this very town of Bethlehem, and that the child would be found lying in a manger in a barn. When the messengers departed, in their wake was the bright starlight that shown upon the town. The men said that though they had been terrified they could not doubt their senses, and knew that God had commanded them to go and find the baby, to worship this child, Immanuel. They looked upon the sleeping infant and continued to weep and shutter excitedly, glorifying God and the great miracle He had deigned to allow them to witness.

            The appearance of the shepherds astonished Joseph, the father, who was nevertheless not completely unprepared. He was a descendant of King David, the anointed, and had been taught the Scripture, and knew the prophecies that the Messiah would herald from the house of David, and be born in the City of David, Bethlehem, Joseph’s own birthplace. Although Joseph was a craftsman, not a scholar, he was dutiful in attending the synagogue, following Mosaic Law, and reading the Scriptures. He knew what Isaiah said about the suffering servant who would be born of a virgin. Reality and experience reflected the dream that had informed Joseph that his wife, Mary, was this virgin.

            Mary listened to the shepherds and pondered what they had witnessed. All that she had been told was coming true. Nine months before, she had been a young maiden living with her parents in Nazareth in Galilee, betrothed to a good man, Joseph the carpenter. Her dreamlike experience of the messenger who hailed her and proclaimed that she was the mother of God had in due course occurred as predicted: her body had changed and her womb had grown. The birth of a wonderful, healthy child and the words of the shepherds were amazing, if expected. 

            Joseph and Mary had bound themselves in the acceptance of God’s will. During Mary’s pregnancy they had learned, along with the other inhabitants of Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, of Caesar’s requirement that all heads of family enroll at the place of their birth. Mary had been in her ninth month when they began the five-day journey to Bethlehem. Jews were taught to obey the Mosaic Law in synagogue and the Roman law by circumstance.

            The checkered political history of the Jews, the ongoing political struggle for power by dynasts among the chosen people, combined with the ceaseless aggression directed toward Israel and Judah, later Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, by outsiders—Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans—had left the Jews a weakened people subject to the whims of outside forces. For several generations the most compelling and dominant force was that of Rome. Like most occupying powers throughout history, Rome required little from its subject peoples as long as they obeyed the laws and paid their taxes. The enrollment that forced Joseph and Mary to journey to Bethlehem was in accord with the latter. Romans governed subject peoples indirectly by means of local rulers, kings and tyrants, and directly, by appointed officials, who were given complete authority subject to the supervision of the Senate, formerly, and at this time, the imperial power, held by Octavian, or Augustus, Caesar. Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, had held power for almost forty years. He along with other tyrants, had destroyed the Republic, substituting the rule of one person. Augustus held power by controlling Rome’s huge military. In the Near East, he preferred to control kingdoms by means of a patron-client relationship with rulers such as Herod and his sons and successors. These men ruled as long as they followed Augustus’ bidding and kept order. Often they worked in cooperation with Roman officials—procurators, propraetors, proconsuls, and governors. Augustus maintained remarkable control by a strong Roman troop presence on the frontiers of an empire that encompassed parts of three continents. The large military was a continual drain on the empire’s resources, for which Augustus paid by taxation. To know what was the proper tax quota for each province and client kingdom required meticulous records of the number of citizens. Hence Augustus ordered the enrollment, or census. Joseph, Mary, and the child stayed in Bethlehem for several days to allow for Mary’s recovery and for Joseph to enroll with the local officials. Joseph was able to find more secure lodgings for his family. He prepared to make the journey home to Nazareth, planning on his way to stop at Jerusalem to accomplish Mary’s purification according to Mosaic Law and for the circumcision of the child according to the Abrahamic Covenant. Meanwhile the shepherds were not silent about their miraculous experience. Word had spread and the devout and curious came from surrounding villages to see the child. Most astonishing of all the visitors were Chaldean stargazers bearing gifts and kneeling before the child.

(This is an excerpt from Metamorphosis: How Jesus of Nazareth Vanquished the Legion of Fear, available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N9B75YF/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7)

Available also at Wipf and Stock: Metamorphosis- Wipf and Stock Publishers

For a signed copy, message the author.

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Behold, A Virgin Shall Conceive

Posted on December 17, 2020 by theamericanplutarch

People throughout the ancient Mediterranean believed that the divine spoke to humans through dreams.

Such was the experience of the young woman, which brought images so vivid, a conversation so easily recalled, that the sights and sounds etched on the mind and memory were never to be forgotten. Whether she was asleep or awake is indeterminable as it was recorded later; the experience was so vivid in her sleep as to be unquestionably real or so dreamlike in her wakefulness as to not be doubted. When the event happened, day or night, winter or summer, month or year, is unknown, unimportant. It was an experience not bound by the normal rules of time. How long it lasted, and whether it was continuous in one or several series of moments, is irrelevant to the experience, to the overwhelming truth that the message contained, both for her and for others. People of her time and of the past had had similar experiences, as she well knew, from hearing stories told or listening to the scriptures being read. She had learned that messengers came and spoke to royalty and commoners alike. So sure were people of her time that such messages were divine, that kings sought out whoever could explain their dreams; some people had that art, soothsayers and prognosticators, experts who could read divine messages in the flights of birds, the arrangements of the stars, the shape of the liver of a sacrificial animal. She had no need for such expertise. Her experience was sufficient to know it was a messenger, one who came from God.

Strangely, in recollecting the experience, she did not describe the messenger save for his name, Gabriel, which means man of God, or strength in God, which was precisely what the girl, Mary, would require to fulfill the requirements of the message. It was an ethereal messenger who spoke to Mary, a messenger without form, merely the spoken word or thoughts, powerful enough to bring about a change in the girl, to cause her body to shutter in the presence of God, to hear more carefully the words spoken, to know for certain what was said to her in her mind.

            She was no one in particular, merely a girl, a virgin, daughter of commoners, illiterate and ignorant as were most such people two thousand years ago. At the same time she was exceptional, unique, one favored by God, selected by Him for an important role, a service for all humankind. Her purpose in life, like all girls and women of her time, was to marry and bear children, if she was so fortunate; few women questioned such a role, it was what their mothers and grandmothers had done, and what their daughters and granddaughters would do. To have a mate and have a child was as natural as to sleep and eat, to live and die. And yet the dreamlike message she experienced, which told her that this was her destiny, which was neither exceptional nor out of the ordinary, was forcefully put, a message of an imminent occurrence, something that could not be delayed. She was a virgin. And yet, she was to have a child. Her dream turned out to bear a divine gift.

            Modern philosophy and science are uncomfortable with the presence of God in any venue, much less the womb. What should be considered the most inviolable place has been violated and penetrated time and again to destroy the most sacred of all things, life. Great thinkers, such as Sigmund Freud, who saw God as the figment of the collective imagination, the product of psychic yearning for completion and love, are aware of no true unity with the divine, in or outside of the womb. Other great thinkers, such as Karl Marx, believing that biological demands precede consciousness, that before awareness is hunger, subject humans to the overwhelming dominance of time and place. Yet, ironically, now and in the past humans have engaged in an unending search for the divine, the discovery of which, it is thought, will yield answers to the many perplexing questions confronting humankind. Great have been the number of philosophers who ask the questions all humans ask and propose answers fit for their time and place. Rather than finding humility in the elusive search for truth, thinkers wallow in the hubris of knowing. All the while humans face the abyss of ignorance.

Dreams invite acceptance of the unreal, something outside of oneself. Individuals in any culture at any time feel an overwhelming need for completion, sense a pull from a transcendent other. What Rudolph Otto called the numinous was the dazzling light that blinded Paul of Tarsus; the child’s voice that responded to Aurelius Augustine’s agonizing question; the austere, universal presence of the One that so captivated Plotinus and his disciples Porphyry and Julian; the oneness that Siddhartha Gautama experienced in the rushing water of the river of life; and the fear and awe that Moses knew when standing on holy ground before Yahweh. All of these religious experiences involve particular people at particular times seeking, sensing, reaching out for, receiving, and accepting, the transcendent.

            The greatest threats to modern society in the third millennium, Anno Domini, are not overpopulation, hunger, disease, terrorism, global warming, and war–although these are pressing problems to be sure. Rather, the modern scientific worldview of purposeful objective thought is destroying the subjective, intuitive awareness of the numinous and transcendent that humans have sensed for countless ages. The individual’s sense of self is a casualty in the secularization of knowledge that has occurred during the past two centuries. Impersonal social and economic forces rather than life are the great agents of change. Reason and science have overwhelmed intuition and art; the subject who intertwines oneself with the object of inquiry is condemned as biased and prejudiced; personal religious beliefs have no place in scholarly endeavors. This secular, objective trend is, perhaps, a mere aberration in time. The period from the structured urban lifestyle that began in Mesopotamia five thousand years ago to today is comparatively brief in the history of humankind. The age of modern science since 1500 is on the human time scale just a fleeting moment. The transcendent and the transient, the subjective and the objective, intuition and reason, have been united from the beginning of humankind.

            Mary’s betrothed similarly received a dreamlike visitor, a messenger bearing a gift, who asked of him to accept what he did not understand, to abide by a will larger than himself. Joseph, a simple man who worked with his hands, not a great thinker or exceptional leader, rather a person content to listen and abide, dreamed of God’s messenger telling him to accept a destiny that would have otherwise been abhorrent to him. Betrothal to a virgin implied she would be untouched until marriage, that her womb was reserved for his seed. Joseph dreamed, however, that Mary was pregnant and that her womb was inviolable and sacred and that he must accept the child as his own. He awoke to a new reality that he acted upon with confidence in the truth. He transformed his entire life according to a message he received in a singular, inexact moment of time.

            Joseph was a Hebrew, a Semite, a descendant of people who had migrated from ancient Iraq, Mesopotamia, west to the land of Canaan, what in time became Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea. The Book of Genesis describes the transformation of these Semites into Hebrews by focusing upon the story of a man, Abram, and his wife, Sarai, nomadic herders who followed a divine call to journey to a distant land. Like other Semites, Abraham and Sarah and their people continued to feel the terror of the unknown, but their fear was mitigated by the realization of a God who cared for them, who was Himself Fate, who controlled all things, and who could circumvent the laws of nature should He so desire. This identification of self with God grew more sophisticated with the passing centuries. We find in Exodus Moses discovering a God of law and deliverance called simply, “I Am Who I Am.” Who precisely this God is and what are His powers and interest in humans is made specifically clear in the writings of the Psalmist David, king of the united kingdom of Israel and Judah from 1000 to 961, Ante Christos. David, at the same time a warrior, murderer, adulterer, and conqueror, was also a poet and singer of extraordinary talent and sensitivity, whose Psalms express the epitome of piety and anguish, love and torment.

            David’s poems are ironic expressions of faith in an all-powerful God even as evil torments and controls the poet. David discovered the dreamlike existence of continually being seduced by some force, some spirit, something strangely in yet outside himself. It was there to counter whatever felt good, those pleasant feelings of life, when things appear right, more than adequate, and nothing is better than a peaceful smile and soft sensations of contentment. It was a fleeting sensation, this intrusion into constancy and order, this violation of satisfaction and happy thoughts. It pierced well-being. It distracted normalcy. It penetrated into a deep well of abandonment, fear, distrust, envy, selfishness, anger, and lust. It found the weakness of his being, the entrance in time of corruption, the fleeting path to what is not real, the moment when fantasy, indolence, hunger, dissatisfaction, and the corporeal reign. It was not right yet it felt good. It was wrong yet just for a moment it was allowed. Evil triumphed. But only in the passing moments. God triumphed over the timeless, the transcendent feelings and experiences that overwhelmed the singular instance of evil.

            God, Yahweh, transcends the moment by speaking in a timeless fashion. Sometimes his words are profound, as to Moses. Usually they are indirect, as to Elijah, when he heard God whispering to him. Sometimes the voice of God is found in the wind. The Hebrews discovered that God often speaks subtly, as through dreams. Elihu, in the ook of Job, proclaimed that God’s word comes to humans “in a vision of the night,” and He tells them of His plans, and dissuades them from their’s.

Many Hebrew prophets were experts in dream interpretation. Joseph the son of Jacob became the powerful adviser to pharaoh after providing an insightful interpretation of the Egyptian ruler’s dream. After failing to find his own dream prophesiers able to explain his perplexing dreams, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar employed Daniel, who provided the correct interpretation. The Hebrew prophets heard the voice of God in singular and transcendent moments, either when awake or asleep, and responded like Isaiah, who declared, “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me.”

            Isaiah, learning of God’s plans, even predicted that at some point in time, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” God is with us.

(The above passage is taken from Metamorphosis: How Jesus of Nazareth Vanquished the Legion of Fear, available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Metamorphosis-Jesus-Nazareth-Vanquished-Legion-ebook/dp/B07N9B75YF/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

Also available at Wipf and Stock: Metamorphosis- Wipf and Stock Publishers

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