We all have ancestors, and I think we will agree each of us has exactly the same number per generation. The trouble starts when we shift from the question of quantity, and assert quality, and say our own always knocked home runs, and never cheated.

I am going to take my own ancestors and treat them as human beings. For I have always thought it a low trick to put frills on the ancestral breeches, when they really wore buckskin.

This is a story of early America, the history of struggle and blood. Sometime our ancestors exploited others, and sometime they got exploited. But whatever they were, they were just like us—they sang and prayed and got drunk and wept and went broke, just like us.

This why the flashing of coats of arms arouses a smile, or possibly resentment, in me. In the first place, most of us in America have only questionable claims to noble antecedents; and in the second place, even if the heraldry is bona fide, it doesn't make men out of us.

If we are to judge history correctly, we must do two things: read between the lines, and think what we would have done under the circumstances. Thinking of my own acts as a soldier, I doubt if George Washington folded his arms, set his foot out and posed dramatically in vari-colored uniform as he crossed the Delaware; and knowing cloakroom gossip in the Congress of my own time, I doubt several passages in history.

A general idea of heroic ancestors filled my heart when I was young. It was not of my own, necessarily, but those of America. America had always been right, I thought, except once; this was the Civil War, when all the people on the other side of the Mason and Dixon line were wrong, and we of the South fought for States Rights, Justice and Humanity. Somehow, I did not think of Slavery.

Vaguely back in Revolutionary history was a Sam Maverick, who I felt must have been my ancestor. For indeed he had shed blood for America, and had died at the hands of the British, in the Boston Massacre.

But I have studied the case; Sam was a youngster, and probably a relative, and he died without children. Always I had read the story by old Sam Adams, the greatest revolutionary propagrandist that ever lived. He used deadly language, spoke of "that awefull massacre." It always struck me with horror.

So I got copies of the original proceedings. The true story is that the British troops exercised more restraint than usually exercised by angry soldiers. The governor had been treated with contempt, his house looted. It was a long story, but after being harassed a long time, the infantrymen, having been called "bloody-backed bastards" and well stoned, fired.

Possibly the British captain did not exercise the restraint he might have. But there have been since then hundreds of deeds much more bloody and cruel, commited by our own police and troops in on our own people, and no one has worried very much.

America need not be horrified at the misdeeds of the British. We were then British ourselves. And now we treat our own American population worse than our ancestors were treated by our fellow Britishers.

But many of us blind ourselves to the present, and do not permit the true history of our country to deter us from our fond myths.

One of the big myths is that our ancestors, in one great gust of patriotism and joy, came to America because they loved liberty and freedom.

The truth is that practically all of them came because they were forced to. Those who had profitable businesses, or owned good farms, stayed in the old country. Why should they have taken a dangerous sea voyage, if they were getting along all right at home?

Those who came here with money came to buy cheap land and get richer, and have slaves. As soon as the poor ones were able, they did the same.

And those who came because they were denied religious freedom were soon found to be denying that same freedom to others—even killing people whose religious ideas were different.

Sam Maverick, of Noddle's Island, now East Boston, who lived in New England from 1622 until his death around 1676, said:

"And whereas they went over thither to injoy liberty of Conscience, in how high a measure have they denyed it to others there, wittnesse theire debarring many from the Sacraments spoken of before meerly because they cannot Joyne with them in their Church-ffellowship; nor will they permitt any Lawfull Ministers that are or would come thither to administer to them. Wittnesse also the Banishing so many to leave their habitations there, and seek places abroad elsewhere, meerly for differing in Judgment from them as the Hutchinsons and severall families with them, & that Honble Lady the Lady Deborah Moody and severalls with her meerly for declareing themselfes moderate Anabaptists, Who found more favour and respect amongst the Dutch, then she did amongst the English. Many others also upon the same account needless to be named. And how many for not comeing to theire assemblies have been compelled to pay 5s a peece for every Sabbath day they misse, besides what they are forced to pay towards the maintenance of the Ministers. And very cruelly handled by whipping and imprissonment was Mr Clark, Obadiah Holmes, and others for teaching and praying in a private house on the Lords day. These and many other such like proceedings, which would by them have been judged Cruelty had they been inflicted on them here, have they used towards others there; And for hanging the three Quakers last yeare I think few approved of it." [A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, by Sam Maverick. British Museum.]

Maverick was quite cordially hated by many of the colonists in Massachusetts. Woodrow Wilson says, without authority, that he was expelled from the colony. But Bolton says he was not expelled, because of his social position (he was the son of a minister), and because of his wealth and his genial nature. [The Real Founders of New England, Charles K. Bolton, Clarendon Papers]

But Maverick did get fined for raising a row about the violation of civil and religious liberties, and the fine was 150 pounds. Proceedings were started to take Noddle's Island (now East Boston), his home, away from him. And one time the authorities watched his guests and arrested several as they left, charging them with being drunk. But of one of the guests, Major Edward Gibbons, a witness testified that the major was "no debauchee but of a Jocund Temper, and one of the Merry Mounts Society who chose to Dance about a Maypole, rather than to hear a good sermon."

Maverick was always cooking up schemes. He figured out the plan of taking over New Amsterdam, and the story ought to be told here. I shall tell it, however, in a later chapter about the City of New York, and it is very important in American history.

My people moved to the Barbadoes but returned to the mainland, and a great-great grandfather, Sam Maverick, of South Carolina, soldiered in the Revolution. He was near Manhattan Island, too, but as a prisoner in the notorious British Ship, Jersey, and he died because he was kicked in the mouth by a British sailor, and because of disease contracted on the ship.

Now, I have ridden around in history and have talked confidentially with many others besides the Mavericks, among them Charles Lynch, 4-gt. grandfather, of Ireland. I wanted to know if he really was entitled to a coat-of-arms, if he really did belong to the nobility, because you can buy a Lynch coat-of-arms for $9.50, colored and in pure gold, right here in Washington. But I found, instead of being of the nobility, he was a very poor boy, hi-jacked against his will into this country. He was the father of Charles Lynch, Jr., who originated the term "Lynch Law" in America.


Gen. Lewis's best friend among Cherokees against Shawnees in 1755

Then I talked to another ancestor, a great something grandfather, General Andrew Lewis, of Virginia, and found out just why his father slew someone, and fled Ireland as a fugitive. And in Court Houses over the State of Virginia, I saw documents, some nearly three hundred years old, signed by these ancestors of mine. Some wrote a clear, bold hand, indicating culture and education; others, in the same county, signed with their "mark," being illiterate.

But to consider the Lynches especially, with their coats-of-arms: There is a history all written up, and it costs a dollar and a half. The story is like that of many other families by which we up-start Americans claim noble blood. It tells how some King or Emperor granted the coat-of-arms for "an heroic deed," and "defending a city," which shows genealogists have little imagination, for many of the other "noble" families have the same story.

And for the sake of the Lynches living today, who are of various racial stocks, we are given convenient origin in almost every country in Europe except Russia. I hope too many Russians do not get rich.

But my Lynches were Irish, and Catholics. Lynch, the immigrant, lived in Galway. There were many mayors of Galway named Lynch. [Hardiman, History of Galway] Somewhere there was a Lynch coat-of-arms. But the original Lynch who came to America never claimed one, and it is very likely that he was not even remotely related to the alleged noble Lynches.

The present day noble-izing process generally consists in first getting prosperous. Then we take a Cook's Tour to Europe. We see the old "ancestral castle"—in which our ancestors did not live, and if they did, it wouldn't make us any better, or worse.

But I am telling about my own family now, and their connection with our violent human history. Going back far enough, we see the Fontaines and the Maurys in France as Huguenots, being persecuted by Louis XIV. They did not realize, at least none of their documents indicate it, that what Louis wanted was their land and their wealth. Also, Louis did not like another religion bobbing up, for it gave people ideas about their "rights." History of the time shows Louis regarded his action in revoking the Edict of Nantes as righteous, although he rather frankly regarded it as necessary for consolidation and concentration of power.

The diary of one of my ancestors, Rev. James Fontaine, Huguenot, is amusing, or tragic, whichever you might care to call it. [Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, Fontaine and Maury]

It is a very well written book and quite exciting. But he was forever thanking God when his luck was bad. Once when he had for the third time lost all his property and was attackd by "Ye Irish robbers and Papists," with heavy casualties and a son taken prisoner, he discoursed on the curse of idolatry and then he "did" humbly thank God for deliverance." In France, when the dragoons had come to demand that he recant, he took desparate chances, and escaped. But a worthless brother-in-law—I read this between the lines—who was a fat slob and a good-natured trencherman, recanted, and said he saw no evil in the Catholic religion, for indeed the service was in Latin, of which he understood not a word. My good ancestor was enraged, or full of righteous indignation. For the brother-in-law had been lost to the True Faith! No doubt his descendants, my French cousins, are now walking around with some blight of damnation.

Anyhow, while this was happening in France, and the Huguenots were fleeing from persecution, much as the Jews are fleeing from persecution in Germany today, my other ancestors in Ireland, notably the Lynches, were being persecuted by the British for being Catholics. Still others in England and the Colonies were being made to pay the price for being Quakers, as history shows, and as the document concerning Sam Maverick indicates. And all of them together were persecuting each other, except possibly the Quakers. It is certain, however, that of all of those who came to America, nearly all were so positive that truth existed only in themselves, that they would root out with fire and tong as heretics anyone who disagreed with them.

All of our illusions of heroic ancestors and brave pioneers might make it worth while to study the question from the viewpoint of economic opportunity. For the character, temperament, and personal traits of individuals or families, even whole races, can be conditioned by their nourishment, opportunities, climate, and the type of lands upon which they live.

All this sounds pedantic, of course. But it is important for all of us to know this, in light of economic changes today. The response of the human race to opportunity is told in dozens of essays, reports, investigations and books, and every library is filled to the rafters with them.

In a southern state where I have studied actual families, we see first the immigration from England. The given immigrants were none too vigorous, and of little or no education. Then, within a hundred, even seventy-five years, there arises an aristocratic, cultured, well educated family. Within twenty-five to fifty years after the destruction of the Civil War, the very same families drop out of the picture. They become uneducated, even lacking in common, ordinary education, poverty-stricken, shiftless, and often of the petty, indigent and criminal class.

My point in mentioning these things is to show the necessity of Americans viewing their own history in a personal and realistic way. It is much more interesting, too, for now we hear a tale of treason.