THE MOST AMAZING THANKSGIVING STORY: SQUANTO

There  is  a  book  available  on  Amazon,  Lies  My  Teacher  Told  Me,  by  James  Loewen.   

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448575323&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lies+my+teacher+told+me

The  book's  main  point  is  that  a  vast  amount  of  American  history  which  American  children  are  taught  in  primary  and  secondary  school    is   "cleansed,"  for  propaganda  and  other  purposes,  such  as  catering  to  race  and  religious  prejudices.

One   of  the  victims  of  those  prejudices   is  the  Amerindian  Squanto  who  helped  the  Pilgrims  at  Plymouth  after  they  disembarked  from  the  Mayflower.

The  Pilgrims  arrived  in  the  Mayflower  off  Cape  Cod  at  exactly  the  wrong  time  of  the  year,   on  November  9,  1620,  just  as Winter --  one  of  the  coldest,  most  vicious  Winters  on  record  in  New  England  -- was  setting  in.

After  an  initial  failed  attempt  to  sail  farther  south,  against  contrary  strong  winds  and  currents,   to  Virginia,   Mayflower  Master   Christopher  Jones  turned  about  and  anchored  in  Cape  Cod  Bay.   The  occupants  of  the  Mayflower,  being  sick  of  life  at  sea  and  so  somewhat  rebellious,    organized  the  settlers   by drafting,  and  then  having  the  men  sign,    the  famous  Mayflower  Compact  --  three  of  them,  John  Alden,   William  Mullins,  and  Thomas  Rogers,  the  lineal  ancestors  of  me  and  of  my  siblings  through  our  mother.

Then,  after  some  initial  exploration  of  the Cape  Cod  area,   they  anchored  the  Mayflower  in  what  is  now  Provincetown  Harbor  for  the  Winter,    and  lived  half-on  and  half-off  the  Mayflower,  through  one  of  the  coldest,  most deadly  winters  in  the  history  of  New  England.  More  than  half  of  the  Mayflower's  occupants died  from  cold,  privation  and  disease  that Winter.   In  the  frigid  cold  and snow,  the  Pilgrims  prayed  earnestly  to  God  for  relief  from  their  suffering.

On  March 16,  1621,   as  the  surviving  Pilgrims  were  beginning  to  set  up  Plymouth  Colony,   

an  Algonquian  sachem  named  Samoset  walked  up  to  them  out  of  the  forest  and  in  good  English  he  introduced  himself   and  said  something  like,   "How  do  you  do?  Would  you  mind  giving  me  some  of  your  ale?"

On  March  22,  1621,    Samoset    returned   with  another  Algonquian,  Squanto,  who  spoke  even  better  English  and,  to  the  astonishment  of  the nastily-anti-Catholic  Pilgrims,    made  the  Catholic  sign  of  the  cross  upon  himself  when  he  prayed.   

Squanto  assisted  the  Pilgrims  in  their  relations  with  the  local  aboriginal  American  tribes,  and  is  said  to  have  taught  them  much  about  how  to  survive  in  the  wilderness.

How,  exactly,  did  God  manage  to  answer  the prayers  of  these  ancestors  of  Magnolia  citizens  and  their  Pilgrim  brothers  by  sending  to  them  an  English-speaking  Roman  Catholic  Amerindian  native?

In  1605,  as  Squanto,  a  Patuxet  Algonquian,   probably  around  20  years  of  age,   wandered  along  the  New  England  coast,   he  and  4  other  Algonquians  were  captured  by  English  sea  captain  George  Weymouth,   who   returned  to  England  and  transferred  Squanto  to  Fernando  Gorges  of  Plymouth,  England.     Fernando  tutored  Squanto  in  English    and  in  1614  loaned  him   to  Captain  John  Smith,  for  a  trip  to  America.   

As  Squanto  wandered  the  New  England  coast  after  his  arrival  there  with  Smith,     he  was  captured  by  yet  another  English  sea  captain,  Thomas  Hunt,  who  sailed  to  the  slave  markets  of  Spain  and  put  Squanto  and  some  other  kidnapped  Algonquians  on  the  slave  auction  blocks  there.

Some  Franciscan  monks  saw  Squanto  and  his  fellow  Algonquians  in  the  slave  auction,    bid  for  them,  won  the  bid  and  set  them  free.

Squanto  chose  to  reside  with  the  monks.  After  living  with  them,  learning  Spanish  and   the  rudiments  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Christian  faith,  and  after  his  baptism  by  a  Catholic  priest,     Squanto  said  goodbye  to  the  monks,  purchased  passage  to  England   and   lived  with  a  shipbuilder  while  he  attempted  to  book  passage  to  North  America  with  one  of  the  English  explorers.   Finally,  a  voyage  on  behalf  of  the  shipbuilder  himself  brought  Squanto  to  Newfoundland  in  1617,     and   in  the  course  of  a  march  south  to  New  England  yet  another  English  explorer  sea  captain,  Thomas  Dermer,  took  Squanto  back  to  England  with  him.

Finally,  in  1619,   Squanto  was  given  permission  by  the  English  to  return  to  New  England  for  good.    There  Squanto  found  that  the  villages  of  his  people  were  like  ossuaries  --   bones  of  the  Patuxet  Algonquians   lay  scattered  about  their  villages,  after  the  people  were  killed  by  some  kind  of  epidemic,  and  their  bodies  eaten  by  local  wildlife.

Squanto  was  allowed  to  begin  living  with  a  neighboring  Algonquian  tribe,    the  Wampanoags.

Two  years  later,   Samoset  introduced   this   English  speaking  Roman  Catholic  Amerindian  to  the  profoundly  astonished  Pilgrims,  and  the  rest  is  history.

JOKE: PAIN IN THE EYE

PATIENT:  Doctor!  Doctor!  Every  time  I  go  to  drink  coffee,  I  get  a  horrible  pain  in  my  eye!

DOCTOR:  Did  you  try  taking  out  the  spoon  first?

MAGNOLIA IN THE COLONIAL ERA, Part 1

NOTE:  CLICK  ON  ILLUSTRATIONS  TO  ENLARGE  THEM.

The  various  accounts  of  the  early  history  of  Southern  New  Jersey,  including  Magnolia,    are  not  easy  to  knit  together.  In  reviewing  them,    as  a  group,  one  gets  the  feeling  that  the  most  reliable  accounts  are  by  the  local  historical  societies,    including  the  account  pulled  together  by  members  of  the  Magnolia  Historical  Society,    found  here ...

http://www.magnolia-nj.org/aboutMagnolia/history/history.htm#History_of_Magnolia

In  any  event,   in  trying  to  get  a  mental  picture  of   the  earliest  history  of  Magnolia  --  that  is,  in  the  part  of  the  colonial  period  immediately  preceding  that  which  is  discussed  in  the  link   set  forth  above  --  it  is  useful  to  incorporate  into  one's  understanding  several  sources  at  once.

FIRST,  MAGNOLIA  WAS  LENAPE  ALGONQUIAN

There  is  fascinating  evidence  that  the    pre-colonial  history  of  the  Lenape  Algonquians  of  the  Delaware  Valley,  including  those  situated  along  the  banks  of  the  Cooper  River   including  into  the  forests  and  meadows  of  what  is  now  Magnolia, Camden  County,  New  Jersey,   is  much  more  complex  and  interesting  than  most  imagine.  More  on  that  another  time.

Suffice  it  to  say  that  portrayals  of  the  Lenape,  dividing  them  into  three  sub-tribes  called  the  Minsi,  the  Unami  and  the  Unalachtigo  are  probably  artificial  and  the  product  of  European   thought  processes.

A  Lenape  Indian  living  in  a  group  in  what  we  now  call  "Magnolia  Borough"  would  probably  have  been  surprised  and  confused  to  hear  that  he  was  an  "Unalachtigo"  living  in   "the  land  of  the  Unalachtigo."  "Tribal  leadership"   appears  to  have  been  un-colored  by  European  political  concepts  of  "real  property"  and  "boundaries."    Kraft,  in  his  book  on  the  Lenapes,  agrees  with  this  notion  of  the  simplicity  of  Lenape   conceptualization  of  themselves:  There  is  not  good  evidence  that  before  the  Europeans  came,   the  Lenapes were  organized  into  3  sub-tribes. 

However,  contrary   to  Kraft,   the  Lenape  were  not  illiterate.  They  could  write,  with  a  complex  and  clever  Algonquian  writing  system  called  Mide  Script  by  scholars  today.     What  Mide  Script  really  is  is  astonishing  beyond  the  reckoning  of  most  today.  More  on  that  another  time.

The  Lenape  in  our  area  lived  in  Quonset-Hut-like  longhouses ...

...  and  were  hunter-gatherer-farmers.

There  were  probably  rumors  among  the  Lenape  of  sightings  of  the  earliest  European  explorations  of  the  areas  which  we  now  call  Delaware,  Southeastern  Pennsylvania  and  Southern  New  Jersey.

The  last  two  verses  of  the  Lenape  language  epic  called  the  Walam  Olum  probably  reflect  those  rumors  of  the  sightings ...

At  this  time,   from  north  and  south,  the  whites  came.   They  are  peaceful.  They  have  great  things.  Who   are  they?  

--The  Walam  Olum,    Book  V,  Verses   59-60.

Dutch  explorer  David  DeVries'  map

of  southern  New  Jersey.

Note  well  the  Lenape  longhouses

from  the  vicinity  of  "Timmer  Kil"  --

Big  Timber  Creek  --

and  "Rankokus  Cil"  --  the

Rancocas  Creek  in  Burlington  County  today.

THEN  MAGNOLIA  WAS  DUTCH

"The  whites"  of  the  Walam  Olum   were   probably  the  Dutch,  who  first  established  their  settlement,  Fort  Nassau,  apparently  a  trading  post   inside  a  square  palisade  enclosure  surmounted  with  cannon,   in  what  is  now  Westville,  Gloucester  County,  New  Jersey,  between  1624-1627,  on  the  Delaware  just  south  of  Big  Timber  Creek    (of  which  Magnolia's  Otter   Branch  Creek  is  a  tributary).

A  drawing  of  Peter  Stuyvesant's  Fort  Casimir   

in  what  is  now  Newcastle,  Delaware,

which  was  made  of  dismantled  Fort  Nassau,

and  so  it  is  probably  a  good  portrait

of  Westville's  Fort  Nassau,  also.

So,  initially,    from  1624  to  1627,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  Dutch  colony  headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  Westville,  New  Jersey.

Because  trade  with  the  Lenape  was  profitable  only  certain  times  of  the  year,     the  Dutch  would  occupy  and  operate   Fort  Nassau   on  an  intermittent  basis,  only.  The  Indians  themselves   appear  to  have  occasionally  made  use  of  the  fort   when  the  Dutch  weren't  around.

THEN  MAGNOLIA  WAS  ENGLISH

The  English  didn't  like  this   Dutch   presence   on  the  Delaware  one  bit.    So,  in  1635,    about  a  decade  after  the  Dutch   first  established  a  European  presence  in  our  region,   a  group  of  English   settler/soldiers  from  the  Jamestown   colony  in  Virginia   sailed  up  the  coast  and  into  the  Delaware  and  seized    unoccupied  Fort  Nassau.

Suddenly,   in  1635,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  suddenly-English  colony  headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  Westville,  New  Jersey.

THEN  MAGNOLIA  WAS  DUTCH,  AGAIN

When  reports  of  the  English  seizure   of  the  fort  in  what  we  now  refer  to  as  Westville,  New  Jersey   reached   the  ears  of  fat  Wouter  Van  Twiller,  Director-General  of  the  colonial  headquarters  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company's  colony  of  New  Netherlands,   he  did  not  like  this  new  situation  one  bit,  and  so  he  immediately  dispatched   an  army  of  Dutch  settler-soldiers  to   the  Delaware  from  New  Netherlands  --  the  Harbour  of  New  York  --  who  captured  a  boat-load  of  English  settlers  on  their  way  up  the  Delaware  to  settle   the  lands  around  that  fort  in  what  we  now  call  Westville,    and  kicked  the  English  out  of   the  fort,  and  once  again  raised  the  Dutch  flag   over  what  we  now  refer  to  as   Camden  and  Gloucester  Counties.

Suddenly,   in  around  1637,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  suddenly-Dutch  colony  headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  Westville,  New  Jersey.

The  Dutch  began  to  aggressively  organize   their  re-established  colony   with  Deeds  to  settlers.

I  was  unable  to  discover  if  Magnolia  was  included  in  the  deed  description   in  one  of  these  earliest  Deeds  for  our  area.

THEN  MAGNOLIA  BECAME  SWEDISH

The  Swedes  "wanted  in  on  the  action"    on  the  Delaware.   Beginning  in  1638,  the  Swedes of  the  Swedish  West  India  Company  began  settling   both  banks  of  the  Delaware   from  Wilmington  northward   with  hundreds  of  Swedish  and  Finnish  settler/farmer/traders.

The  Dutch   did  not  like  and  did  not  consent  to  this  new  and  massive  Swedish  presence  in  their  hard-won  colony.    De  facto  sovereignty   gradually  passed  to  the  Swedes  in  southern  New  Jersey  in  the  lands  in  from  along  the  river  all  of  the  way  up  the  river  to  north  of  the  Rancocas.

Slowly  but  surely,    the  Swedish   flag  went  up  the  flagpole  with  the  Dutch  flag,  and  finally    held  sway  in  our  area,  so  that   ultimately,   probably  around  the  mid-1640s,     Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  Swedish  colony  of  Nya  Sverige,   New  Sweden,    headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  the  State  of  Delaware.

AND  THEN  MAGNOLIA  BECAME  DUTCH  AGAIN

The  officials  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company  did  not  like  this  Swedish  presence  on  the  Delaware  one  bit.  In  the  late  1640s,  the  new  Director  General  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company  in  what  we  now  call  New  York,  Peter  Stuyvesant,   began  to  dispatch   a  Dutch  military  presence  to  the  Delaware  Valley.   In  1651,    he  had  Fort  Nassau  on  the  Delaware  south  of  Big  Timber  Creek    in  what  we  now  call  Westville,  New  Jersey  dismantled  and  transported  to  what  we  now  call  Newcastle,  Delaware,    and  constructed  what  we  now  call   Fort  Casimir,  to  consolidate  and  strengthen   the  Dutch  presence  and  Dutch  sovereignty  on  the  Delaware  River.

Gradually,  the  Swedes  settled-in  along  the  Delaware  on  both  sides,  including  in  South  Jersey,    came  to  view  themselves   as  being  subjected  to  their  Dutch  adversaries.

Slowly  but  surely,    the  Dutch  flag  went  up  the  flagpole  and  re-ascended  over  the  Swedish  flag,  and  finally    held  sway  in  our  area,  so  that   ultimately,   probably  around   1653,     Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  Dutch  controlled  former  Swedish  colony  of  Nya  Sverige,    headquartered  in  Fort  Casimir  in  Newcastle,  Delaware.

A  diorama  of  Fort  Casimir

in  what  is  now  Newcastle,  Delaware

AND  THEN  MAGNOLIA  BECAME  SWEDISH  AGAIN

The  Swedes  didn't  like  this  Dutch  resurgence  one  bit.

In  1654,  Johan  Risingh,  a  deputy  of  the  Swedish  Governor  of   Nya  Sverige,  took  Fort  Casimir   back  from  the  Dutch,    and  raised  the  flag  of  Sweden  over  Nya  Sverige,  again,    re-establishing  Swedish  sovereignty  over  South  Jersey.

The  Swedes  actually  convened  a  council  with  the  Lenape,    and  established  with  them  a  treaty  recognizing   them  as  subjects  of  the  newly  re-establish  Swedish  colony.

Suddenly,   in  early  1654,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  suddenly-Swedish  colony  headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  Newcastle,  Delaware,  this  time  with  the  supposed  consent  of  Lenape  leaders.

AND  THEN  MAGNOLIA  BECAME  DUTCH,  AGAIN

The  officials  of  the  Dutch  West  India  Company  did  not  like  this  new  Swedish  resurgence  on  the  Delaware  one  bit. 

In  1655,  Peter  Stuyvesant  himself  led  a  large  Dutch  force   which  essentially  "kicked  the  tails"  of  the  Swedes  of   Nya  Sverige,  took  over  all  of  the  forts  of  the  Swedes  on  the  Delaware  in  the  ensuing  few  years,   decisively  re-establishing  Dutch  dominion  over   the  lands  along  the  Delaware.

Suddenly,   in  late  1657,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  outskirts  of  the  "re-Dutch-ified"  colony  locally  headquartered  in  what  we  now  call  the  State  of  Delaware.

MY  ANCESTOR,   GERRIT  VAN  SWEARINGEN,   FINDS  HIMSELF  ONE  OF  THE  LEADERS  OF  THE  DUTCH  COLONIES  ON  THE  DELAWARE  --  AND  SO,  OF  MAGNOLIA  (ALTHOUGH  I'M  NOT  SURE  THAT  HE  WAS  MORE  THAN  VAGUELY   CONSCIOUS  OF  THAT  FACT) !!!
One  of  Peter  Stuyvesant's  soldiers  in  the  re-taking  of  Fort  Casimir / Newcastle,  Delaware,   in  1657   was  a  young  man  named  Garrett Van  Swearingen,

my  mother  Eleanore  Ann  Eitelman's
father  Edward  Decatur  Eitelman's
mother  May  Katherine  Pitman's
father  Decatur  Pitman's
mother  Eleanore  Amanda  William's
father  Congressman  Jared  William's
mother  Anne  Swearingen's
father  John  Swearingen's
father  Thomas  Swearingen's  father.

In  essence,  Garrett  Van  Swearingen  was  a  Catholic  kid  from  post-Reformation  Holland   who  "made  good"   in  the  New  World.

My  great  great  great  great  great  great  great  great  grandfather  Garrett  Van  Swearingen  was  fluent  in  French,  German  and  English.  That  made  him  very  useful  to  the  Dutch  West  India  Company,   which  in  1656  made  him  "supercargo"  --  Superintendent  of  Cargo  --  on  the  Dutch  West  India  Company  ship  the  Prince  Maurice.  In  March,  1657,  the   Prince  Maurice  became  hung  up  on  submerged  rocks  off  Long  Island.  G8  GF  Garrett,  as  supercargo,  had  the  presence  of  mind   to  organize   not  only  the   effort  to  save  the  crew  and  passengers,  but  also  the  valuable  cargo  of   the  Prince  Maurice.     Duly  impressed,   Governor  Stuyvesant   included  G8  GF  Garrett  in  the  military  force  forcibly  removing  the  Swedes  from  Fort  Casimir,  where  he  settled  after  the  fort  was  taken.

G8  GF  Garrett Van Swearingen  rose  up  steadily  through  the  ranks,  from  Clerk  in  the  Fort  Store,  to  Chief  Commissary,  to  Second  Councilor,  to  First  Councilor  or  "executive  officer,"   to  Captain  --  the  military  commander  --  and  "Schout"  or  Sheriff,    and  judge  in  the  Fort's  Court.

AND  THEN  MAGNOLIA  BECAME  ENGLISH,  AGAIN

The  English  did  not  like  this  new  Dutch    resurgence  on  the  Delaware  one  bit.  They  had  come  to  view  North  America  as  "English  property."     Soooooooo ...

In 1664, the world turned upside-down for the Dutch and for Garrett and Barbara Van Swearingen [his  wife]  and their family. Relationships with the local Indians finally exploded, and Van Swearingen was dispatched to patrol the vicinity and kill Indians. One chronicler wrote, "He had fought the Mohegan Indians in the forest beyond Beverwych, driving the war bands before him, consuming their villages until the savages begged for mercy. His days went by with battle and nights with watchfullness. Van Sweringen and his company came down from the hills through the forest of Beverwych, to find the city of New Amsterdam had been taken by the English."

The English, it turned out, had invested New Amstel and simply stolen it from the Dutch while Van Swearingen was off fighting Indians.  Here is the Chronicler's full account, including Lord Baltimore's miraculous offer to Garrett and his wife and children...

"Colonel Nicols of England, sent by His Majesty, Charles II, and his deputy Sir Robert Carr were to take over the Dutch colony at New Amstel

"Van Sweringen said wearily, 'Without a blow they took Amsterdam, as if there were no one near.' Then drawing his sword from the scabbard, he kissed its long, straight, splendid blade, and, with sudden of anguish, broke it across his knee, and standing as high as he could in his stirrups he threw the pieces over the wall into the dusty meadow grass. 'Farewell good blade, forever more!, he said, 'forged in honor, honorably brave, shall never be drawn in dishonor. Thou wast wrought to strike for the Netherlands, and thou mayst not strike for the Netherlands. Thy steel was for the Netherlands, my hands are for van Sweringen.' Then he stretched his hands out before him, saying in a piteous, chocking voice, "They are all that is left, I am ruined!' For at first he was thinking of himself, but now he thought of his wife and daughter. He rode through the gate to the house where his wife and daughter were staying, he went quickly. His wife was sitting at the window. 'Barbarah,' he said, 'I am ruined!' and there he stopped, he was choking. She looked up quietly, 'Yes Garrett,' she said, 'I heard of it. They can not say that I married thee for thy money anymore,' and with that she laughed very softly. Garrett said , 'I have not a guilder to my name, I am brought to beggary.' Barbarah said, 'I am just as rich as thee, dear heart, as ever I was. To be ruined without fault is no disgrace.' She said, 'it matters not to me for I gave up home and everything to go with thee.' His wife was sitting on one side, Elizabeth, his daughter, on the other, sitting upon a foot stool and leaning against his knee. 'Father,' said Elizabeth, 'We don't mind it terrible for us. We shall take a little house, and mother shall do the weaving, and I shall do darning and spin, oh how I can spin, and I shall gather wild hops for the brew, and nuts and berries in the woods. We woman will cook, and thee shall work by the day, and we shall save stuiner by stuiner untill the stockings are full again.'

"About this time there was knock at the door, it was Lord Calvert. Needless to say Garrett Van Swearingen  was in no mood for English humor, which he misunderstood. The governor actually came to offer Garrett a position of sheriff in Maryland. 'There are pretty posies hanging their heads in rows for the lass to come and pick. Carr is a dirty scoundrel, I have just told him so to his thieving face.' said Master Calvert. 'Let me make good the wrongs he has done. Then ye shall need no more to curse the English for a pack of thieves and perjurers. Come down to Maryland, Van Sweringen, you and all that be yours. Man it will be a happy day! Mistress van Sweringen,' he said, with a laugh and half a choke, 'Prevail with me against this dear, honest fool of thine. He is the most obstinate , argumentative person that I ever stood against. Lord Baltimore had told him you can take up 1,000 acres, at twenty shelling a year. Ye may believe as you please and say what you will, so you be Christian and speak no treasons, and if you will teach us to keep our own lawns as you have kept of the Dutch, you will confer a precious favor on the next Lord Baltimore.' As his long speech ended, he silently bowed, and stood there quietly. Meinheir van Sweringen got up from his seat turning said simply, 'My friend, my good and true friend, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, you have put a new light in the world for me.'

"Van Swearingen later testified, ‘Sir Robert Carr did often protest to me, that he did not come as an enemy, but as a friend; demanding, only in friendship, what was the King's own, in that country. There was taken from the City and the inhabitants thereabout, to the value, so near as I can now remember, of four thousand pound sterling, likewise arms, powder and shot in great quantity. Four and twenty guns were, the greatest part, transported to New York.

"The Dutch soldiers were taken prisoners, and given to the merchantmen that were there, in recompense of their services; and into Virginia, they were transported to be sold, as was credibly reported by Sir Robert Carr's officers, and other persons there living in the town.

"All sorts of tools for handicraftsman, and all plough gear, and other things to cultivate the ground, which were in great quantity; besides the estate of Governor Debouissa and myself; except some household stuff and a negro I got away; and some other movables, Sir Robert Carr did permit me to sell.'"

And so, in 1664, my G8 GPs Garrett Van Swearingen and and Barbara DeBarette Swearingen and their children and Barbara's father and brother moved to St. Mary's County, in southern Maryland, and began a new life there."

Suddenly,   in  1664,   Magnolia   was  part  of   what  was  very  loosely  comprehended   as  the  Lenape-occupied  portions  of  the  English  colonies  in  the  New  World  of  Charles  II  of  England.

So,   Magnolia  was  (1)  initially  part  of  the  realm  of  the  Lenape  Algonquians,    in  lands  watered  by  what  we  now  refer  to  as  the  Cooper  River   and  Otter  Branch  Creek,  a  tributary  in  the  Big  Timber  Creek  watershed. 

(2)  Then,  beginning  in  1627,  it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   on  the  outskirts  of  the  Dutch  colony.

(3)  Then,  beginning  in  1635,  it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   on  the  outskirts  of  the  English  colony.

(4)  Then,  beginning  in  1637,  it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   on  the  outskirts  of  the  Dutch  colony,  again.

(5)  Then,  beginning  in  the  mid-1640s,  it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   on  the  outskirts  of  the  Swedish  colony.

(6)  Then,  beginning  in  the  early  1650s,   it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   on  the  outskirts  of  the  Dutch  colony,  again.

(7)  Then,  in  1664,   it  was  Lenape-occupied  territory   inside  of  the  English  colony  of  what  later  came  to  be  called  the  State  of   New  Jersey.

It  was  shortly  after  this  period  of  "See-saw  Sovereignty"   that  Magnolia  as  we  know  it  today  finally  began  to  take  shape,  as  described  in  the  Magnolia  Historical  Society's  excellent  narrative,   the  link  for  which  is  set  forth  above.

More  to  come.

NEVER FORGET: SOMETIMES THE DOCTOR IS WRONG

THE  DOCTOR  WHO  WANTED  TO  AMPUTATE  MY  BIG  TOE
In  that  piece  on  premium  gas  which  I  posted  the  other  day,     I  noted  that  once,  when  I  pumped  gas  for  16  hours   in  the  snow  one  extremely  frigid  December  day  40  years  ago,    the  frostbite  in  one  of  my  big  toes  was  so  severe  that  the  toe  froze  solid.     My  heavy  winter  sock  froze  to  it,    and  when  I  managed  to  get  the  sock  off   the  toe  was  so  solidly  frozen  that  if  I  tapped  it  with  metal,  it  made  a  clicking  sound.

At  Frankford  Hospital  at  on  Frankford  Avenue  and  Wakeling  Street,  next  to  the  Frankford  El  in  Philadelphia,  the  Emergency  Room   doctor  said,    "Well,  Mr.   Dawson,  that  is  one  bad  case  of  frostbite.    That  toe  is  coming  off."

I  thought  to  myself,  "Losing  that  toe  will  be  a  life-changing  event.   It's  going  to  ruin  sleep  for  years  with  phantom  limb  pain.  That's  going  to  interfere  with  law  school  and  work.   It's  going  to  interfere  with  exercise.   It's  going  to  affect  relationships.    No.  I'm  not  going  to  just  blithely  give  up  my  toe."

So  I  told  the  doctor,  "No,  you  are  not  going  to  amputate  my  toe."

The  doctor  became  upset   and  said,  "But  the  flesh  on  your  toe  is  going  to  die  and  rot  and  fall  off   and  turn  gangrenous!     It  could  kill  you!"

I  responded,   "I'm  sorry.  We  are  going  to  try  to  save  the  toe.     And  you  are  going  to  prescribe  antibiotics  to  pre-medicate  me.  You  are  also  going  to  give  to  me  the  instructions  you  normally  give  to  someone  who  is  only  a  little  bit  frost-bitten.  If  it  turns  out  that  we  have  to  amputate,  then  we  will.    But  not  yet."

40  years  later,    I  still  have  that  big  toe.    Sensation  in  the  toe  is  only  about  50%,  but   it  is  a  working,  normal-looking  big  toe.

The  doctor  was  wrong.

I  was  right.


THE  DOCTOR  WHO  WANTED  TO  CASTRATE  ME
Years  ago,  my   wife  Rise`  was  Director  of  the  Volunteers  of  America  Day  Reporting  Center  for  parolees  in  Camden,  New  Jersey.

One  day,  one  of  the  Center's  new  clients,  newly-released  from  Camden  County  Jail,     reported  to  the  Center  for  the  first  time.     Unaware  that  virtually  his  entire  body  was  covered  with  a  thin,  sweet-smelling  sheath   of  colonies  of  bacteria   referred  to  by  epidemiologists   as   the  Camden  County  Jail  strain  of  Methicillin-resistant  Staphylococcus  aureus  ("MRSA"),   the  parolee  asked  to  use  the  Men's  Room,  emerged  after  not  thoroughly  washing  his  hands,  and  introduced  himself  to  my  wife,  shaking  her  hand.  When  he  did  that,  he  left  on  her  hand  an  invisible  splotch  of  the  bacteria.

My  wife  suffers  from  chronic  excema  on  her  hands.    She  probably   scratched  a  minor  itch   on  the  hand  that  shook  the  hand  of  the  new  parolee.

By  giving  her  minor  itch  that  little  scratch,  she  injected  herself  with millions  of  MRSA  bacteria.

One  of  the  bacteria  traveled  in  a  vein  about  a  foot  up  her  arm,  and  implanted  itself  in   the  wall  of  the  vein,  and  emerged  within  48  hours  as  a  boil  on  her  arm,  and  began  to  attack  and  dissolve  blood  corpuscles  at  the  boil  site,   with  one  goal:     To  consume  the  iron  atoms  in  her  hemoglobin  protein  molecules.  The  rest  of  the  bacteria  were  destroyed  by  Rise`'s   immune  system.

None  of  us  understood   how  dangerous  MRSA  was  when  Rise`  first  brought  it  home.      We  thought  that  she  simply  "had  a  boil."   She  went  to  the  doctor  for  it.  He  gave  her  an  antibiotic,    which  made  the  boil  go  away.   We  thought  that  was  it.

But  first  one  son,  and  then  another,  and  then  another,     got   boils.   And  suddenly  we  realized  that  we  had  a  mini-epidemic  in  our  house.

At  first  I  thought  that  I  was  immune  --  I  was  the  only  one  in  the  house  not  getting  boils.

What  I  did  not  realize  was  that  though  my  body  initially  resisted  the  boils,    a  subtle  change  in  the  normal  odor  given  off  by  my  skin,  in  the  direction  of  what  might  be  described  as  "sweetness,"   meant  that  I  had  become  a  very  dangerous  carrier  of  the  disease  --  that,  undoubtedly,  without  getting  any  boils,     I  had  that  same  sweet-smelling  invisible  sheath  of  MRSA  bacteria  covering  my  entire  body  that  the  parolee  had  had,     so  that  I  was  leaving  splotches  of  MRSA  bacteria  on  everything  I  touched.  Additionally,  my  clothes  were  becoming  dangerously  suffused  with  MRSA,  so  that  every  time   my  wife  or  I  did  the  wash,  just  disturbing  my  clothes   caused  an  invisible  cloud  of  MRSA  spores  to   rise  over  the  clothes,  so  that  whoever  was  doing  the  wash  breathed  it  in.

I  am  fanatically  clean.    However,   one  good  shower  a  day  was  not  enough  to   wipe  out  the  MRSA  colony.    The  rule  is  this  --  thoroughly  soaping-up   and  rinsing-off  in  a  shower   washes  90%  of  the  bacteria   off  your  skin  and  down  the  drain,  leaving  a  10%  presence  on  all  parts  of  your  body,  which   fully  grows  back  in  about   16  hours.

The  MRSA  colony  on  my  skin  finally  overcame  my  body's  immune  system,  and  I  developed  a  big,  ugly  MRSA  boil  on  my  scrotum.

A  typical  MRSA  boil,

with  smaller  boils  "orbitting"  around  it

By  this  time,  I  was  beginning  to  understand  MRSA  --  better,  frankly,  then  our  family  doctor,  Dr.  Leonard  Kabel.   I  rushed  off  to  him,  to  get  him  to  lance  the  damnable  thing    and  prescribe  antibiotics.

"Pete,"  he  said,  "Relax!  It's  just  a  boil,  which  is  really  nothing  but  a  big  pimple.    If  you  leave  it  alone,  it  will  probably  go  away  by  itself!"

"You're  wrong!"  I  said,  with  some  urgency.     "I'm  fairly  sure  that  it  is  this  new  flesh-eating  disease,  MRSA.   It's  dangerous!"

"Pete,"  he  said,  "You  read  too  much.     Go  home.  It'll  go  away  on  its  own."  

One  week  later,  I   was  back  in  Dr.  Kabel's  office.     The  boil  had  infected  the  testicle   beneath  it.    The   testicle  had  grown  to  the  size  of  a  plum,  and  my  scrotum  had  an  enormous,  frightening  looking  boil,  surrounded  by  about   10  other  tiny  boils,  on  it.

Dr.  Kabel  was  shocked  at  the  changes,  and  he  whispered,  "Pete,  it  may  be  too  late   for  medication.    I  think  that  you  may  be  in  serious  trouble,  here.

"Would  you  consider  castration?"

His  change  from,  "Don't  worry  --  it's  only  a  big  pimple!"  to    "It's  too  late  for  meds  --  let's  castrate"    in  one  week's  time  made   me  crazy.

I  lost  it.  I  stomped  out  of  his  office  for  fear  that   I  would  yell  at  him  or  punch  him  for  not  giving  me  an  antibiotic  the  week  before,  and  decided  to  find  another  doctor.

I  also  did  something  else.

As  I  had  become  too  old  for  jogging,   I  reverted  to  "power  walking."    I  was  up  to  three  miles  per  night.

One  of  the  things  I  had  discovered  with  4  mph  "forced-march"  style  "power  walking,"  involving  hard,  fast,   walking  with  constant  deep  breathing,   was  that  everything  --  even  skin  blemishes  --  got  better  quicker.

So,  because  of  my  MRSA  infection,   I  doubled  it.

I  did  3  miles  in  the  morning,  3  miles   at  night.

As  I  continued  looking  for  a  new  doctor,  within  24  hours,  I  noticed  a  difference  in  my  infection  from  the  "power  walking."

With  48  hours,   the  infection  --  and  my  testicle  --  had  begun  to  shrink.

Within  72  hours,    I  had  once  again  had  a  single  small  boil  on  my  un-swollen  scrotum.

Within  96  hours,    all  I  had  down  there  was  a  small  pimple.

By  the  end  of  the  week,  the  really  mean  MRSA  infection,  that  had  infected  a  testicle  and  made  it  huge,  and  covered  my  scrotum  with  a  frightening-looking  set  of   boils  --  and  motivated  my  doctor  to  request  that  I  agree  to  be  castrated  --  was  gone.

I  later  found  out  that  what  I  had  stumbled-into  wasn't  that  "exercise  is  healthy."  Rather,  it  was  the  not-yet-well-known  weakness  of  the  MRSA  bug:   The  receptor  it  uses  to  invade  and  destroy  the  blood  corpuscle  to  get  at  its  iron  atom  is  closed  when  the  corpuscle  is  oxygenated  --  when  it  is  carrying  its  oxygen  load  to  serve  the  body's  functions.

So,  to  deprive  it  of  food,    all  one  has  to  do  is  cause  oneself  to  be  well  hyperventilated   during  each  MRSA  bacterium's  life  span.

Which  would  ordinarily  be  impossible   except  for  the  fact  that  the  total  life  span  of  each  MRSA  bacterium  is  only  20  minutes.

So,  by  engaging  in  hyperventilation-causing  "power  walking"   for  90  minutes  twice  each  day,   I  was  functionally  starving  to  death,  twice  a  day,    billions  of   MRSA  bacteria  which  could  not  find   un-oxygenated   blood  corpuscles  to  invade  and  dissolve,  to  survive  and  reproduce.

The  doctor  was  wrong.


I  was  right.



THE  DOCTOR  WHO  SECRETLY  USED  ME  AS  AN  EXPERIMENTAL  PHARMACEUTICAL  GUINEA  PIG
I  suffered  from  asthma  beginning  when  I  was  a  child,  but  it  went  undiagnosed.

When  I  was  in  my  30s,    one  of  the  girls  who  did  typing  for  my  law  practice,  Mimi  Bird,    heard  me  complaining  about  phlegm  which  I  could  never  seem  to  cough-up,  that  it  was  ruining  my  sleep.    "Pete,"   she  responded,    "Maybe  that  sensation  of  phlegm  is  an  illusion.  Maybe  you're  experiencing   constriction  of  your  bronchial  tubes  due  to  asthma  inflammation.  Go  buy  yourself  a  Primatene Mist  inhaler  and  see  if  it  relieves  the  symptoms."

I  took  Mimi's  suggestion.  It  worked.  She  was  right.

So,    my  buddy  Mimi  saved  me  by  diagnosing  my  true  problem.

The  problem  with  Primatene  Mist  is  that  one  can't  take  it  for  chronic  asthma  problem.    Albuterol   (which  should  be  sold  over-the-counter,   in  my  opinion,  since  it  is  gentler  than  Primatene  Mist,  and  longer  lasting  in  its  effects)  should  be  prescribed,  instead.

And  so  I  began  to  take  Albuterol.

Until   the  pharmaceutical  industry  came  up  with  Serevent.

One  day,  the  family  doctor,  Dr.  Kabel,  asked  me,  "How  many  times  a  day  do  you  take  albuterol?"

"I  inhale  two  shots,  twice  a  day,"  I  responded.

"That's  too  much!"   he  responded.    "I'm  prescribing  a  new  inhalant,   Serevent.  Let's  see  how  you  do  with  that."

I  looked  at  his  prescription.     It  was  for  two  shots,  twice  a  day.

Upset,  I  said,  "The  Albuterol   works  fine.   You  have  me  inhaling  this  new  stuff  exactly  as  frequently.    Why  try  to  fix  it,  if  nothing's  broken?  You're  not  getting  drug  company  kickbacks  of  some  sort,  are  you?"

Dr.  Kabel  was  silent.

So,   I  flipped  over  to  Serevent.    It  worked  fine.  But ...

But,  shortly  after  I  began  taking  it,  I  developed  mitral  valve  prolapse.

At  night,  every  time   I  began  to  go  to  sleep,    the  mitral  valve  in  my  heart  "clicked,"   startling  me  awake  with  a  jerk.

I  would  jerk  awake   10  or  15  times  a  night,  until  exhaustion  from  lack  of  sleep enabled  me  to  sleep  soundly.

Once,  I  was  lazy  about  refilling  my  Serevent  prescription.    And  the  mitral  valve  prolapse  vanished.

Immediately,  I  realized   that  the  Serevent  was  causing  the  sleep-destroying  mitral  valve  prolapse  "click"  in  my  chest  at  night.

I  experimented  by  substituting-in  Primatene  Mist  for  Serevent  for  a  week.     No  mitral  valve  prolapse.

So,  I  made  an  appointment  with  Dr.  Kabel,  and  I  told  him  about  my  experiment.

"No   more  Serevent,"     I  said.   "Just  Albuterol."

Dr.  Kabel  answered,  "Pete,  I'll  tell  you  what:   Let  me  try  this  other   brand  new  inhaler,  Advair,  and  you  won't  have  the   mitral  valve  prolapse  problem  anymore."     

I  looked  at  his  prescription.   Two  shots,  twice  a  day.   I  started  to  become  angry.

"Doctor,"   I  said,    "Once  again  you  have  me  inhaling  exactly   as  much  of  this  new  drug  as   Albuterol.    Albuterol   is  fine.  My  lungs  love  it.  Let  me  just  go  back  to  that."

"Just  try  this  new  stuff,  Advair,  and  let  me  know  how  you  do,"    he  responded.

As  soon  as  I  started  on  Advair,  I   started  suffering  from  mitral  valve  prolapse,  again.    Click,  click,  click,  click,  click,  every  time  I  tried  to  go  to  sleep  for  the  night.   I  angrily   went  to  Dr.  Kabel's  office  without  an  appointment.

"This  new  stuff  has  Serevent  in  it!"  I  asserted.    "My  heart  is  clicking  away  again  every  night.   It's  ruining  my  sleep.   You  lied  to  me!"

"Okay,  okay!"    he  admitted.    "Yes,  it  has  Serevent  in  it!     I  was  just  testing  you,  to  see  if  it  was  all  in  your  head!"

"WHAT???!!!"  I  objected.    "YOU  WERE  RUNNING  AN  EXPERIMENT  ON  MY  BODY  WITH  DRUGS  WITHOUT  TELLING  ME???!!!"

"Oh,  calm  down,"  he  responded.  "Here's  your  Albuterol   prescription!"

The  doctor  was  wrong.


I  was  right.


THE  DOCTOR  WHO  INJURED  MY  KIDNEYS
Another  doctor,  whose  name  I  will  not  name,  because  he  is  still  alive  and  practicing  and  would  not  want   the  truth  broadcast  in  a  website,   prescribed   Norvasc   for  my  gradually  increasing  blood  pressure  for  years. 

One  day,  when  the  sphygmomanometer   gave  a  blood  pressure  reading   of   140/100  -- a  blood  pressure  level  that  was  okay  by  me,  but  not  the  doctor   --   the  doctor  said,   "Pete,  I   want  to  try  to  get  your  reading  down  to  120  over  80.  Some,  I'm  going  to  try  the  next  step  up  in  blood  pressure  medications."

I  responded,  "Doctor,  why  not  leave  well-enough  alone?  My  body  is  perfectly  happy  with  Norvasc.   Why  play  around  with  the  meds  for  a  few  more  points  on  the  shygmo-whatever-you-call-it?"

But,  he  refused  to  prescribe  Norvasc,  and  went  with  amlodopine  benazepril  instead.

When  I  went  into  the  doctor  for  my  re-prescription  of  the  benazepril,    he  took  urine  and  blood  samples  for  general  battery  testing,  too.

Then,  I  got  a  call  to  come  in.

"Pete,"   he  said  with  a  grim  look,  "Your  creatinine  level  is  suddenly  'off  the  charts.'  I've  examined  and  re-examined  and  re-re-re-examined   your  file,   and  all  I  can  think  of  is  that  your  kidneys  reacted  badly  to  the  benazepril.    I'd  like  to   make  a  referral  to  another  doctor,  to  talk  to  him  about  going  on dialysis."

I  thought  to  myself,  "He  has  injured  my  kidneys  because  he  wanted  to  do  a  stupid  experiment   with  my  blood  pressure  meds,  to  try  to  get  negligible  progress  on  my  blood  pressure  reading.  And  now  he  wants  me  to  do  DIALYSIS???!!!"     I  had  grounds  for  rage,  but  I  kept  my  cool.

I  thanked  him   for  the  referral  --  and  never  went  on  dialysis.

Instead,  I  re-upped  my  walking  to  6  miles  per  day  again,    drank  a  lot  of  water,  and  prayed.

When,  a  few  years  later,    I  went  to  a  nephrologist   (a  "kidney  doctor"),  he  said  that  my  kidneys  had  repaired  themselves,  and  I  was  good-to-go,  again.

The  doctor  was  wrong.


I  was  right.


THE  "BOTTOM  LINE"
What  is  the  "bottom  line"  on  all  of  this?

Is  it,  "Ignore  your  doctor's  advice"?

No.  Your  doctor  is  a  smart  guy.

But  he  isn't  God.

He  (or  she)  may  think  so.  But  he  (or  she)  isn't  God.

He  (or  she)  is  just  a  very  smart  fallible  person.

BUT,  just  because  your  doctor  says,  "X,"   DON'T  conclude  that  "not-X"  is  impossible.

Think  things  through.

Exercise  discretion.

If  I  hadn't  done  that,  I'd  be  a  eunuch  with  no  right  big  toe,  on  dialysis,  whose  clicking  heart  made  him  jerk  awake  about  20  times  a  night.

Listen  carefully  to  your  doctor.

But,  beware.