A Timely Family History Lesson
The other day I mentioned to my son Cameron something I heard the great economist Thomas Sowell say.
Sowell had reminded the Black Lives Matter protestors who were indiscriminately toppling statues and defacing monuments around the country that a lot of white people were instrumental in ending slavery.
Not just Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln and the hundreds of thousands of Northern soldiers who died in the Civil War, but also many abolitionists who were fighting to end slavery long before the shooting started.
“That’s funny,” Cameron said, “I’ve been doing research on Mom’s side of the family. You wouldn’t believe how famous and influential they were.”
“Really? The Sterns?”
“Oh, my God, Dad,” Cameron joked. “Your father was just president of the United States. Mom’s family founded the United States.”
Cameron, 42, is a stay-at-home dad with a lot of time on his hands.
He was discovering a lot of information we didn’t know about my wife Colleen’s historic family, the Sterns, who trace their origins back to the English immigrant Isaac Stearns.
Isaac Stearns, who had an “a” in his last name, was not only among the original Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He and his two brothers came over in 1630 on John Winthrop’s boat, the Arabella.
Cameron told me Charles River in Boston was named after Isaac’s brother Charles Stearns when he fell overboard into the unnamed channel.
...continued
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
