A book review originally published at New York History, an online magazine edited by John Warren. John is also an editor at Adirondack Almanack.
Don't tell the folks at Knox's Headquarters State Historic Site where he held court as the Revolutionary War came to an end, but no one really cares about Henry Knox. It's not that we shouldn't, it's just that we don't - don't have the stomach for it.
It's mostly Knox's own fault, he was kind of a jerk who lived opulently after his retirement in Maine where he hoped to exploit a retinue of labors and craftsmen in shipbuilding, brick-making, and cattle-raising. His neighbors came to despise him, rejected his leadership, threatened to burn him out, and tore down his mansion after his death.
Knox's Maine estate, Montpelier, was the center-piece of his million acre holdings - an empire acquired through graft and corruption. Once a right-hand man of General George Washington who later served as the nation's first Secretary of War, Knox was so unpopular in his later years that local settlers armed themselves and threatened to burn his home to the ground and voted him out of office (electing a local blacksmith in his place).
Unfortunately, Mark Puls's Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution ignores these details and instead paints an all-too-friendly portrait of the man who served as a model for Col. Pynchon in Nathanial Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.
Puls's Henry Knox is just a simple hero and the basic outline of his career is rehashed as a central figure in the American Revolution. "In many instances," Puls writes," Washington depended on Knox to save the army, and in doing so, he placed the fate of the country in his hands." Perhaps this is just the value of Puls narrative, to remind us that there were others who participated in the the revolution that established a new government here in America. But serious students of history want more, a fuller picture of a complicated man.
For example, it's inconceivable that any treatment of Henry Knox can leave out Joseph Plumb Martin. Martin joined the Revolution in 1776 as a Private and was eventually made a Sargent. Compared to Knox, he was a relatively obscure man during his life. After the war he spent some time as a teacher in New York and then settled in Maine where he was elected Selectman, Justice of the Peace, and for more than 25 years, Town Clerk. Martin's popularity with his neighbors isn't the only thing that separates him from Henry Knox. There was also that time Henry Knox drove him from his 100 acres.
When I was developing the poster for our new program, Families Growing Together, I took six-year-old Brianna down to our garden plot for some pictures of a full basket of vegetables.
We started on the carrots. I showed her the rows and told her to grab a bunch of leaves and yank them straight up out of the ground. She did, and her reaction almost brought tears to my eyes. “This is a carrot? Really, a carrot? Can I eat it?”
We went on to beets, yellow string beans, and cherry tomatoes. It was tough to convince her that a yellow string bean was really a string bean, but she ate one, and then a tomato, and then another string bean, and then another tomato.
We went to the garden pump, washed off a few carrots and ate them, walking the paths together.
This is exactly what I wanted to happen when I started working on Families Growing Together. Kids and parents growing vegetables, learning about how the soil nurtures our food, working in a garden together and enjoying all the bounty.
It isn’t only about vegetables, of course.
It’s families spending time together, getting to know each other.
It’s children mastering skills, feeling the joy of making something happen.
It’s parents seeing their children experience something amazing.
Families Growing Together is a year-long workshop that will teach 20 Putnam County families how to grow their own food. It’s funded by a wonderful grant from United Way of Westchester and Putnam.
Starting in October, we’ll have a class every month. We'll begin by learning how to prepare the soil for next year’s garden and follow with sessions on nutrition, cooking, kid-friendly science activities, and more.
Each family pays $40 for classes and its own 20’ x 20’ plot at the Tilly Foster Farm Community Garden in Brewster. Children will get kid-sized gardening tools, and each family gets a year-long gardening journal to record their experiences.
Master Gardener volunteers will be on hand to help teach and mentor families through the seasons. We’ll also show families who don’t have access to garden space how to grow vegetables in containers on a deck or a porch. And next September, we’ll have a big harvest party – enjoying the foods we’ve grown and the experiences we’ve shared.
What I hope will happen -- and I think there’s a pretty good chance -- is that this experience will lead these 20 families to eat more vegetables, enjoy gardening as exercise, feel healthier, and be able to make more good food choices.
I hope they’ll tell their friends and neighbors and start their own garden at home.
That quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is close to Susanne Norris's heart. An educator at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, Susanne stays busy running a Discovery Center and a long list of education programs each using the historic homes in Hyde Park as teaching to tools in lessons about history, ecology, forestry, and many other topics.
One of Susanne's favorites,"Where do Human Rights Begin," takes place at Val-Kill Cottage, Eleanor Roosevelt's home. It builds on Roosevelt's accomplishments to help 7th-12th graders grasp the role of human rights in the real world. Those interested in teaching about human rights can join Susanne for a special workshop September 15. See below for details.
Peter Rottenbucher is an intern with the Hudson River Valley Institute at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He is a History and Spanish double major with a strong enthusiasm for education and academia. Peter will spend his junior year in Madrid, Spain, hoping to master the language and later in life combine his passions for language and history.
That quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is close to Susanne Norris's heart. An educator at the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites, Susanne stays busy running a Discovery Center and a long list of education programs each using the historic homes in Hyde Park as teaching to tools in lessons about history, ecology, forestry, and many other topics. 