Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Findings in Boston

Better late than never! Yes, these pictures in Boston were taken 5 months ago while taking a trip to the state house. We found a plaque to William Billings who was Americas' first composer and hymn writer who lived during the War for Independence. He wrote one of the most famous colonial marching tunes of all times...Chester: "Let tyrant shake their iron rods...New England's God forever Reigns." I have played that song many time while marching down New England roads on the 4th of July in costume. We even played it as a family at Bunker Hill this summer while attending the Reformation 500 Celebration.
You need to blow up this plaque. This is where John Hancock's house stood. There was another plaque nearby that said that he owned this field where he grazed his cows. Now it's a state house. I would like to have seen John Hancock's cows.
My lovely wife and I outside of the Mass. State House. There are some wonderful paintings in here like one of John Winthrop.

Me family on the marble stairs in the State House.

A statue of my favorite person in history...George Washington riding his horse on Boston Gardens. He might have looked like this when he first rode to Cambridge when he first took command of the continental army. I just learned that their is a life size statue of him in London...go figure! "The bronze statue (in London) is a replica of Jean Antoine Houdon's marble statue in Richmond, Virginia, and was given to the Nation in 1921 by the 'Commonwealth of Virginia'."Their hero too...

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Florida


Here was a "monumental" find I wasn't expecting on a trip that Monica and I took to Jacksonville Florida last month. A monument to the first landing of protestants in North America... Wow! It predates Jamestown and Plymouth by about 60 to 70 yrs.


What a plaque! The first protestants on American Soil placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution". Not sure why they put it up, but it's wonderful to see that kind of connection between the very beginnings of the protestant migration to America and the War for Indepedance. The War had it's roots in the Protestant Reformation. For more info on that topic, see the The Light and Glory.
By the way, this first protestant group was led by a man named James Ribault in 1562 who was a French Huguenot. Unfortunately, shortly after they built their fort, the Spanish who had settled a bit south in what's now St. Augustine, marched all night thru a swamp and massacred everyone except women and children and a few men that escaped. However, as we know, that did not stop the Reformation establishing a beachhead on Ameican soil.



Ponce DeLeon
"Gee I don't look any younger standing next to Ponce DeLeon. The only fountain of youth I'll experience will be when Christ transforms this lowly bodies to be like His."

Summary of the Battle of Trenton