Forerunners Happy Birthday to Stonewall Jackson, Henri Duparc, Ludwig Thoma and Paul Scofield, They make an impressive and bizarrely different quartet. But I’m staying strictly personal today. It’s also John C Fremont’s 202nd birthday: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Fr%C3%A9mont#mediaviewer/File:John_Charles_Fr%C3%A9mont.png My Austro-Hungarian-Romanian-Jewish-American great-great grandparents - Samuel and Therese Hirschl - had twelve children, the first six born in Europe, the other six [including my great-grandmother] in the USA. Three of their names have historical and political implications. Lajos Kossuth Hirschl was born in 1848 and it’s obvious why he was so named, a tribute to the Hungarian revolutionary whose defeat convinced Samuel and Therese that reactionary Europe was no place to raise a family. Andrew Jackson Hirschl was born in 1852, and I guess – Jackson himself died four years before they sailed for America in 1849 – that they were paying their respects to his posthumous reputation as a democrat and populist rather than to his less salubrious military and Presidential acts. Their sister born in 1856 was called Jessie Fremont Hirschl. I’m intrigued. I like to think – no, I strongly suspect – that this was not especially in honour of Fremont’s role as soldier and explorer. He was the anti-slavery Presidential candidate in 1856, and his wife Jessie played a very prominent and outspoken part in the campaign. She was also a writer. I’d be happy if my great-great aunt were named for an early feminist and campaigner for the rights of black Americans. One of my English great-great aunts was a very early teacher in the East End after the 1870 Education Act, and – because she lived to be 106 - a ‘retired’ member of the NUT for even longer than she was an active member. When one of my American cousins found out that Samuel and Therese sold ham and sides of bacon when they settled in Davenport, Iowa, he said: ‘Those are the kind of Jewish ancestors I like.’ hjbmaps/products/1852-karte-von-iowa-nach-den-neuesten-hulfsmitteln-gezeich-von-j-graessl
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 08:25:29 +0000
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