President Trump’s recent comments about Elizabeth Warren and her potential connections to the Cherokee and Delaware tribes touch all of us, because all families tell stories about who they are. Many of them are simply tales, but are often deeply believed. In my family there have always been these swirling rumors of Amerind blood. Look at those cheekbones! And with nearly four centuries of exposure on this continent it would seem that sometime and someplace there would have been some exchange of genetic material. This hope or idea is not supported by research or DNA, yet still it persists.
But the Pocahontas comment from the President, whose own family closet is not so free of skeletons, stings also because it is in part a slur casually belittling those that were here before the mass of us came as immigrants, and in many cases as refugees or unwillingly. The characterization casts a negative dint on Native Americans at a time when they valiantly work at Standing Rock to hold the line on what they see as their treaty rights against the oily juggernaut that threatens our not only our political system but the likelihood that our economic, social and biological constructs will survive for future generations. This is all part of the idea that if you degrade and belittle an enemy it makes it easier to destroy them later.
Depiction of Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock.
But before I charged down this corridor of thought I wanted to see what swamp or moral high ground my own family might hold. Through my mother’s and father’s sides of the family I descend through two passengers on the Mayflower, James Chilton and Richard Warren, respectively. So my family got off to a rocky start in terms of relationships with the tribes. We were the ones who took what was not ours and needed welfare to survive. Sure it was nearly four hundred years ago, but it bears remembering.
Benjamin Church
From Plymouth Rock forward in nearly all the colonies and Canada my family seemed to make friends and enemies of those who came before us in nearly equal measure. For example, I descend too from Benjamin Church who famously made friends with some natives and adopted their combat techniques to fight against other warring tribes in the King Philip, King William and Queen Anne Wars. Benjamin is credited with forming the idea of the American Rangers and these adopted techniques have been instrumental in this country to this day. He seemed a person who could make war or friends with Native Americans as the situation demanded.
Commemorative coin honoring Penelope Van Princis Stout (front and back).
I also descend from Penelope Van Princis Stout who is often called the Mother of Monmouth. She was shipwrecked along with her ill husband on the New Jersey shore. Her husband was killed by natives and she was severely wounded in the attack and left for dead only to be rescued by an Indian who took her to New Amsterdam and safety. Much mystery surrounds this early settler but her experience with native peoples was certainly mixed.
And that is what I find mainly when I look through pages and pages of interactions. Mary Ball Munro's father and her siblings were killed in an Indian raid in 1675. Marie Jeane Guie was shot with an arrow during the Battle of Frenchtown in 1813. The sons of James Robb and Margaret Barr(e), David and James II, fought Tecumseh at the Battle of Tippecanoe along with their brother-in-law John Waller whose father John “KW” Waller had been held captive by the Indians in Kentucky for a period of two years before escaping. And Colonel Thomas Gales served as a well-respected Indian Agent in Louisiana until he was felled by a combination of disease and depression following the death of his young wife (see above).
General William Walton Morris
Perhaps the distillation of this family tendency towards situational relationships with Native Americans is best illustrated by General William Walton Morris who graduated the Goat of his class at West Point in 1820. Morris was a young lieutenant in charge of the artillery (two field pieces) during the fight against the Arikara in August 1823 under Henry Leavenworth and Bennet Riley alluded to in the recent movie The Revenant. While at West Point, Morris befriended fellow classmate David Moniac who was a member of the Creek tribe and the first Native American graduate of that institute. Moniac was killed fighting the Seminoles in 1836. Morris fought alongside Creeks in his own battles against the Seminoles in Florida during that same conflict. Of note too Grandson Lt. Colonel Joseph Gales Ramsay latter served at Ft. Riley in Kansas named for his grandfather’s former superior officer when it was the home base for a certain George Armstrong Custer.
Book illustration of the 1675 Lancaster Massachusetts raid where John Ball, Mary Ball Munro's father, was killed along with her siblings.
The bottom line of this historic and genealogical ramble here is that my ancestors killed, were killed and befriended Native Americans depending upon what seemed to serve their or the Indian's purposes at that time. But, of course, this same statement could be made for my ancestors and pretty much any members of a particular race, creed, or country they came in contact with. And maybe that is really the important point and lesson here. The critical variable here is not race, creed, or country of origin but how we treat and view one another and whether or not we offer a hand or a fist to others. Walls versus tables send similar messages.
Jane Rolfe Bolling daughter of John Rolfe and Jane Poythress.
So back to Pocahontas whose son John Rolfe married Jane Poythress daughter of Francis Poythress the Immigrant and my many generations removed great-grandfather. We should not stand for Pocahontas' name being used in this manner. All of us should grow from these collective experiences and get beyond this sort of behavior. And given that San Jose is in many places underwater at this point and the oceans are going through massive changes, maybe it is also time that we listen to what these phenomenon are telling us rather than what pipeline interests and their politically-installed advocates say. Perhaps too it is time that we speak to those at Standing Rock with our mouths and brains rather than with water cannons and troops. Maybe it is too late, but you never know when this often taught lesson will finally be absorbed.
“Donald Trump, he’s got these Joe Six-Pack issues on his mind, and he’s got these Joe Six-Pack common sense solutions — he just happens to be an extremely successful and charismatic, with a very large platform, Joe Six-Pack,” she clarified. Sarah Palin quoted in 2015
Two election cycles ago there was an attempt by John McCain—with help from then Gov. Sarah Palin—to use “Joe the Plumber” as a campaign icon to justify policies that would likely harm people like Joe. And more recently Ms. Palin has used “Joe Six-Pack” in her own efforts as well as in her cheer-leading for the political theater that is the Trump campaign.
Part of me wants to counter these “Joes” with another “Joe” in the form of Corporal Joe Munroe (1,2) (Munroe) the iconic gray-haired and Parson Weems-worthy ancient Lexington man rumored to be the inspiration for the man featured on drum in the “Spirit of ‘76” painting (above). But dueling myths or partial truths no matter how worthy are really not what this county needs at this critical juncture when our core principles are so much under attack. That said Corporal Joe started me thinking about who might be appropriate in this context and then it hit me: What about Joe’s parents?
"The Proscribed Royalist, 1651" painted by Everett Millais in 1853 depicting a young Puritan women hiding a Royalist in an oak tree after the Battle of Worcester. Young William was not so fortunate.
William Munroe or Munro was born in 1625 in the Scottish Highlands. Little is known of his youth but in his mid-20s we know that he was a Royalist caught on the bad side of battle odds—16000 Royalist to 28,000 Parliamentarians—and as consequence the losing side of the English Civil War. He and some of his brothers were eventually captured in the aftermath of the Battle of Worcester in 1651. About two months later he ended up on a transport ship headed for Plymouth Colony as the bound servant of the very slice of English society that had just handed him a significant defeat. He came to the colony and was released in some manner because he was soon buying land in the Cambridge Farms area and also being fined because his pigs did not have the required rings in their snouts.
"Experience tells us that such a rough thing as a New England Anabaptist is not to be handled over tenderly. It was toleration that made a world Antichristian" (Samuel Willard, Ne Sutor Ultra Crepidam)
For some reason it took William until he was about 40 to marry and then he wed Martha George the daughter of a prominent Baptist convert in 1665. Martha’s father John George was fined, jailed and eventually chased out of Charleston, Massachusetts because of his religious beliefs and practices. Perhaps for William and Martha it was love at first site, but it just might have been a case of the daughter of a religious outlaw finding solace with a long-ostracized and lonely Scottish rebel. They very well might have been each other’s only port in a very stormy sea of Puritanism. Regardless of the underlying chemistry, in a few years they had four children. But let’s leave William and Martha for just a bit.
To say that Mary Ball born in Waterford around 1650 had a troubled childhood in the early years of the Plymouth Colony is an understatement. Her father John Ball was frequently abusive and her mother Elizabeth (Pierce) Ball was characterized as insane or deranged. The family was in court frequently for one thing or another which is one of the reasons that we know so much about Mary’s early life. Eventually around 1655 Mary went to live with her maternal grandparents—John and Elizabeth Pierce or Pearce. Her mother Elizabeth died in 1660 and Grandfather John died in 1661. When Grandmother Elizabeth died in 1667 Mary was put into “service” by the Selectmen with the prominent Bacon family in nearby Woburn.
But before you start thinking about the Daisy character in Downton Abbey understand that the master of the house, Michael Bacon, soon seduced Mary and had her in a family way by 1670. This later condition caused Michael to put young Mary on a ferry to the more permissive Rhode Island as fornication in that time and place could have painful or even fatal consequences beyond those associated with childbirth.
Mary’s newly remarried father John Ball lodged a complaint and she was brought back to Watertown where she and her master went on trial. That Mary was un-wed removed the chance of an adultery charge which was a capital offense so the court proceedings were more about responsibility and support for the soon-to-be-born. Mary was asked to leave Watertown and found herself in Cambridge Farms where she gained food, shelter and employment in the home of William and Martha Monroe. The Monroe home must have acted on some level as an island for outcasts. Then sometime in 1671 or 1672 Martha died.
William Munroe and Mary Ball were married in 1672. Mary provided William with a bouncing baby roughly every year and half for two decades including Joseph AKA Corporal Joe born in 1687 (1). Mary died in 1692 at 42 more than likely in the act of trying to produce another Munroe. William Munroe married again but fathered no more children. He was buried next to Mary in 1717 and in the intervening three centuries it looks to the romantic mind as if their two gravestones are leaning into each other in embrace.
Illustration from Mary Rowlandson's narrative.
William and Mary lived during tough times in a tough world. Mary’s abusive and then neglectful father, for instance, did not go peacefully into the night, but he and his new family were wiped out during an Indian raid in Lancaster (1676); the same attack made infamous by Mary Rowlandson. Yet William and Mary stood out during this era because their travails and challenges encompassed so many of the catalytic issues that led to the formation and ultimate formulation of this democratic experiment we call the United States. William lost status and rights because of his political and spiritual beliefs and Mary was subjected to institutionalized religious and social bigotry that seemed to flow much more quickly and freely than kindness, charity or concern. I suspect too that both of their attitudes were influenced by the less than enlightened treatment of Martha and her father. And like parents time immemorial they probably passed these lessons and sensitivities on to their off-spring and the generations beyond which became scattered like so much dry kindling around a certain town square in a place that had become known as Lexington.
We will never know for certain what, if any, role was played in the Revolutionary War by their son the legendary “Corporal Joe,” but William, Mary and Martha’s descendants were present in abundance at the Battle of Lexington and the subsequent actions on April 19, 1775. In fact, Ensign Robert Munroe William’s grandson was one of the first of eight casualties on the Lexington Green. In reality, it was hard to avoid bumping into a Munroe on that fateful day around Lexington and Concord from the two Johns and Ebenezer Jr. to former Roger’s Ranger Lt. Edmund Munroe who served as a private in Captain Parker’s Company and his younger brother Orderly Sergeant William the owner of Munroe’s Tavern (above).
Marrett Munroe's house that faces out on the Village Green and was damaged during the Battle of Lexington.
All in all Captain Parker’s 77-man company that stood on the Green that fateful day had at least seven Munroes as well as two other Munroe family descendants represented in Joseph Comee and Solomon Peirce. Lt. William Tidd was also married to Ensign Robert Munroe’s daughter Ruth and Captain Parker’s sister Deliverance was married to Nathan Monroe’s father Marrett whose house still stands on the Lexington Green. So when the British killed Robert Monroe as well as wounding Jedediah, Ebenezer Jr., Joseph and Solomon there were plenty in this company who personally and professionally wanted a “second bite of this apple.”
That second bite has become known as “Parker’s Revenge” and all that could gather including a wounded Jedediah headed to a strategic location and gave the British what-for on their return from Concord towards Boston and then skedaddled to the next attack point. Jedediah died that afternoon, but Captain Parker—who was suffering from tuberculosis and died of the disease less than five months later—had made his point and set a standard that inspired soldiers for the rest of the War. Who knows what would have happened to this rebellion and the still-unborn country had this company and others not responded as they did to the morning’s tragedy?
My best guest at this point is that more than two dozen descendants of William, Mary and Martha fought in the Revolutionary War some that were obvious such as General Lafayette’s comrade Captain Josiah Munroe and the not so obvious like great-grandsons Solomon Peirce, Joseph Comee or my direct ancestor Benjamin Williams who was at Bunker Hill. Some survived the ordeal such as Nathan and William and others died like Robert or his cousins Edmund and George who were killed pretty gruesomely by a single cannon ball at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778. But all carried the physical and intellectual DNA of these first Munroes forward into the new country they wrestled into existence.
I cannot help but think that the Munroes and those who stood with their descendants at Lexington would wince at the Joe Six-Pack and Tea Party imagery that is being used as a smokescreen by the super-rich and modern-day religious fanatics to take from citizens of this country what they earned at such a cost centuries before. So as we listen to candidates this election cycle my sense is that we would be better served to embrace those candidates whose platforms would materially address the issues faced by the first Munroes rather than enabling social and religious intolerance or creating more pathways for the elite to hold others in check or for the zealots of any belief to force themselves on the rest of us.
