Jul 26, 2009

Fatherless Child - Expose Number Thirteen

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fatherless/013.html

This child was born two years before the Revolutionary War in a one-room log house with a loft on a farm in the Virginia wilderness. He was the second of four children in a military family of many decorated soldiers, including his father, but his father died when he was only five. His mother then remarried another soldier, who moved the family to Georgia.

When the child was 13, he went back to Virginia by himself in order to run the family farm. This was, even for the time, quite unusual, but the boy was very self-reliant, capable, and responsible, and became used to being on his own.

Being back in Virginia also gave him the opportunity to attend a very good little school not far from his home. Among other students who attended this school were three future presidents of the United States, one of whom would become a life-long friend.

The boy not only enjoyed his studies, but notwithstanding his young age and responsibilities, also proved himself quite able to run the farm on his own, and actually increased its size and success. In his spare time, he loved to wander in the woods. He liked to go hunting -- he was quite a good shot -- and developed a keen interest in studying the flora and fauna.

At age 17, he attended a local college so that he could continue living on and running his farm. When he was 20, he joined the military, and fought in the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He became an army officer, battled in skimishes with Native Americans in the Northwest Territory, and continued his hobbies of hunting and observing wildlife. He also learned to speak several Native American languages.

His eclectic skills became widely appreciated, and one day his old school friend, who as it happens, was now the president, asked him to undertake another mission. This one required intense preparation that included, among other things, the study of cartography and medicine at a university in Pennsylvania.

Upon completing the mission, the child was hailed as a hero across the United States. His success had strengthened U.S. sovereignty across the continent, documented hundreds of new species of animals and plant life, and proved it possible to travel over land to the Pacific ocean. It inspired generations of Americans to push westward to settle the vast frontier, and his expedition to this day remains a cherished example of the American spirit.

This scientist, explorer, military man, pioneer, friend of Thomas Jefferson, leader of the famous Corps of Discovery, and first governor of the Louisiana Territory was

Meriwether Lewis, a boy from a "fatherless home."

Jul 19, 2009

Fatherless Child - Expose Number Twelve

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fatherless/012.html

This child, the fifth child in his family, was born in Virginia in 1807. His parents, who were struggling with debt, were not terribly pleased about the extra mouth to feed.

To make matters worse, the child's mother, although quite beautiful, had always been sickly, and suffered from what we now would call narcolepsy. In fact, she had become so ill several years before the child was born, that she actually had been thought dead, and buried alive in the family burial vault until days later, a sexton bringing flowers heard noises in her coffin and she was rescued.

The child's father had been a well-known war hero and politician, who had fallen on hard times. His business failures and debts caused the family to lose their home. When the child was two years old, his father was thrown into jail because of these debts. Then, when the child was 11, his father completely abandoned the family and left the United States altogether. In his later life, the child resolved never to succomb to his own father's weaknesses.

The child himself, like his mother, was handsome but sickly. His mother, who shouldered the burdens of her large family alone, nevertheless imparted to the child the values of her strong religious convictions, which he carried his entire life, as well as a sense of honor, duty and loyalty to his home.

His mother home-schooled the child until he was about 12. At that point he entered a small local school, where he studed Greek, Latin, algebra, and geometry. He excelled in his math studies, and was widely regarded by his teachers as a polite, hardworking, and conscientious student.

When the child was 17, he decided to enter a military academy. He did so well there, notably in math and engineering, that he graduated second in his class with high honors and no demerits. He married his second cousin with whom he eventually had seven healthy and successful children.

In the military, his first assignment was with the army's corps of engineers. Later, during Mexican War, he started to gain a reputation for repeated extraordinary exploits. He repeatedly was honored for "gallant and meritorious conduct". Ultimately he rose up through the ranks of the military, until he became considered to be the nation's best military officer and became an advisor to the President of the United States.

When the a major war threatened the country, the President called upon him and asked him to accept appointment as the country's top general, leading the American army. But it was not to be. The child agonized over his choices, and wrote to his sister. In his letter to her, he said:

"With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword."

The rest, of course... is history. Although he put his loyalty to home and family above that of his country, because of his accomplishments and remarkable character, to this day this child nevertheless is remembered and revered as one of America's greatest generals. This son of the state of the South was

Robert E. Lee, a boy from a "fatherless home."

Jul 12, 2009

Fatherless Child - Expose Number Eleven

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fatherless/011.html

This child, one of 8 siblings (6 sisters and 1 brother), was born in the mid-18th century to an ambitious and successful colonial mapmaker, surveyor and landowner, who died when the child was 14. His father, who had never received any formal education himself, believed himself to be descended from Welsh kings, and wanted his son to become well-educated in European culture.

When a wealthy friend of the father's died, the child's father inherited a large amount of land and was named guardian of the friend's orphaned children. The child thus started his schooling at age 5, at the private school with classically-trained tutors that his father set up for the children of his deceased friend.

When his own father died, the child inherited his entire estate, and so was not only well-provided for financially, but also able to continue his education as he preferred. His interests and his ideas in many respects veered considerably away from those of his father, and he sought out his own mentors. The inheritance he had received gave him an unusual amount of personal autonomy, and so he left home at age 14 to live and study with one of them. It does not appear that he had a great sense of loss about his father's death, nor did he apparently suffer from being separated for most of the time from his mother and siblings. On the contrary, it appears that he deliberately left what he considered to be a crowded and unpleasant domestic situation.

What the child was most attached to were his studies. The child was a voracious reader, and actually loved to study, sometimes studying 15 hours a day. He continued this habit throughout his life, periodically immersing himself in a wide variety of subjects, including philosophy, art, the various sciences, mathematics, Latin, Greek, horsemanship, agriculture, history, and architecture. He entered college at age 17, which he finished two years later, and then spent the next five years in the study of law and enlightenment philosophy.

When he was in his twenties, he married a young widow whose first husband had died when she was only 19. Ultimately they had six children together, although only two survived to adulthood. The marriage lasted for ten years until her death after the birth of the sixth child. Later there were rumors, which continue to this day, that he had a number of other children as well out of wedlock with another woman but these rumors are hotly disputed.

During his lifetime, this child brought the liberal ideas he amassed during his considerable and eclectic education into his lifetime career in law and politics. He participated in the Continental Congress before and through the Revolutionary War. He wrote the first draft as primary author of one of the most famous pieces of American political literature of all time. He is widely revered as the promoter of radical ideals of Republican egalitarianism and religious freedom upon which the country was founded. He also was singlehandedly responsible for the greatest-ever expansion of terroritory of the United States. Of all his accomplishments, far too many to list in full, he was perhaps proudest that he built a university, which still stands today.

This child, America's third President, and considered to be our most influential Founding Father, was

Thomas Jefferson, a boy from a "fatherless home."

Jul 5, 2009

Fatherless Child - Expose Number Ten

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fatherless/010.html

This child was born in 1865 and grew up in Missouri. He was the sixth of seven children. Life was poor and hard. His sister died when he was three, and his brother died when he was six. When he was eight, 24 people in the little town where he lived died from the measles. He himself was sickly. When he was eleven, in fifth grade, his father died of pneumonia, and at that point he had to leave school to help support the family.

He got a job in a printer's shop as what was then called a "printer's devil." That was a boy who ran errands, cleaned the shop, delivered papers, and generally did whatever his boss told him to do. Four years later, when he was 15, he had worked his way up to the job of typesetter. Perhaps it was doing this job, which required him to read carefully, that helped him become good at writing. Here and there he started writing editorials for the paper.

In some ways, his early childhood work experiences in the printer's shop were similar to those of the famous Benjamin Franklin, more than a hundred years earlier. Stories about the industrious and successful Ben Franklin regularly were held up by adults as a role model for children, and Franklin's sayings were printed in the newspaper the child worked for. In his later life, this child would say that "Benjamin Franklin ruined the childhood of every American boy!"

When he was older, this child went west to seek his fortune. He really did not want to be a typesetter but he worked at that job in different cities. Other jobs he held during his lifetime were as a failed prospector for gold, a travel writer for various newspapers, a failed inventor, a political cartoonist, an entertainer, and a publisher whose company went into bankruptcy.

He met and married a young woman from a well-off family, and invested her money badly. When he had money, himself however, he fancied himself a businessman, but he also was a spendthrift. It is said that he inherited his mother's sense of humor, and his father's lack of business acumen.

At different times in his life he was deeply in debt, although he always worked to pay back his creditors. Integrity and an honest character were of the highest importance to him, although it was sometimes unclear to others when he said things whether he was serious or kidding.

During his lifetime he lived in different countries of the world, and became just as famous as that childhood "thorn in his side", the successful Ben Franklin. By the end of his life, he too had become one of America's most beloved icons, and what he had to say on nearly every topic -- especially politics, justice, and equal rights -- was quoted around the world.

It's probable you already know his stories. He wrote many of them under a pseudonym that has become the world's most famous pen name.

This child -- who by the way also worked as a young man as a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River -- was

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, a boy from a "fatherless home."