1620:
In 1620 a group of very courageous people decided to
seek freedom to live and worship in their own way. They had migrated to Holland
for a few years, but decided to join the Virginia group in the Americas. So
they set out in two ships headed west. Unfortunately one of those ships was
leaking dangerously and both ships turned back.
That delay caused those families on the Mayflower to
arrive in the New England area too late in the year to continue on to Virginia.
While the Mayflower paused off the coast of Cape Cod, it was decided that they
could not continue south, and had to settle on that coast at what became
Plymouth, Mass.
More than half of those settlers died before the next
spring.
It was not long before other ships the next year
decided to join this new community, and a few more years the British Crown
decided that they had to send military forces to control these new escapees
from Great Britain.
Of course the new settlers now had to still obey
British law they had tried to escape.
150 years later, these settlers again decided to
escape British Laws by throwing the British forces out of the new settlement.
Thus we find ourselves with a group of citizens that pondered and wrote, then
re-wrote, over and over the Declaration of Independence in 1776. We the
People……….
Declaring freedom, and achieving freedom are two
different things. As that battle for Independence continued, it was 1787 when
the British decided they had been defeated.
We then instituted the Constitution, and as an
afterthought the Bill of Rights to dispel any misunderstanding about these new
freedoms our settlers had declared for what now became the United States of
America.
On the Mayflower there were two families, those of
George Soule, and Francis Cooke, they are my ancestors.
Many other early arrivals before 1700 were my
ancestors, and as I decided to find out more about my ancestry, I learned what
a struggle these settlers endured, and how they decided the freedoms our families
should have for a better life in this new nation.
Our nation has had many struggles to survive the last
220 some years. We have elected leaders to guide us along the way, some good,
some not so good, but in the long run, with more freedom than citizens have
ever had anywhere else on earth.
Now these freedoms and the future of our nation is at
risk, from those who wish to divert our sovereignty and join us to a One World
Government. Isn’t it funny that in every Presidential election, the person running
claims he will finally do something to improve our
nation that the previous leader did not do. We are still trying.
“I will do something” to improve our nation that the
previous leaders did not do. See how that works?