Up a Tree

First, a couple of housekeeping items. I was asked about the reference to the Church of Christ in the last post. I mentioned that this was a  popular name for the Congregationalist Church, which is what the Puritans in America called their church. I did not make clear that this Church of Christ has nothing to do with the modern day movement many of us call the Church of Christ today. Today's C of C arose in the 1800s and has its roots in the revivalism of that time. Sorry for any confusion. Second, I also referenced the tensions between the New Haven, Conn., settlement and the Stamford settlement. At the time of my great-great-to-the-x grandfather and the establishment of Stamford, New Haven was the center of a confederation of settlements that operated  independently from the rest of Connecticut. New Haven was the oldest of the settlements and functioned as the capital of the group.  The General Court, which was both a legislative and judicial body, resided in New Haven ...

I tend to think of the events that lead to the American Revolution as having roots fairly close to those events. But the reality is that the roots probably go all the way back to the colonization of what would become the nation. After all, many of those who boarded ships to come here came from a motivation of religious freedom, a desire to shake off the established religion in England, which like its predecessor, the Roman Catholic Church, fancied itself to be the true church, a failing of many reform movements in church history. They felt forced to leave their homeland for a place where they could practice their religion without interference from the English church and its king. Others sought new opportunities in a new land, free from a class system that placed control in the hands of people who often had no other qualification for wielding it than the privilege granted them by their name and title.  So we were founded by a bunch of folks with a fierce independence streak. And wel...