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Thursday, July 03, 2014

One Sam Gives Us Another

Think you’ve got it bad?  Well, for this celebration of Uncle Sam’s birthday, I’d like to tell you just a little of another Sam – a true story.

Sam was the 4th child of 12 that his mother, Mary, bore;  but he was one of the only 3 who survived past age 2.  Mary yet encouraged Sam’s faith in God;  so he married Elizabeth, a minister’s daughter who had more than just Christian faith in common with Sam.  She, too, was one of only 3 who survived to adulthood out of the 12 children born to her own mother.

Soon Elizabeth began bearing Sam’s children.  Their 1st was “a boy who lived for only 18 days.  A year later, she gave birth to a son, Samuel, who lived to adulthood.  … She gave birth to a 3rd child, a son, who lived only 37 hours.  Her 1st daughter … died after 3 months and 9 days. Her 2nd daughter, Hannah, … lived to adulthood.  Her 6th delivery … was a stillborn son.  For 19 days, [Elizabeth] lingered.  Then, at 8 A.M. on Sunday, July 25, 1757, she passed away.”  Thus were just some of the challenging circumstances in the life of a young Samuel Adams.

“Samuel Adams was the archetype of the religiously passionate American founder, the founder as biblical prophet, an apostle of liberty.  …  He was the moral conscience of the American Revolution, a man who never lost sight of the Revolution’s political  and religious goals, which for him were fundamentally intertwined.”

I’m looking forward to reading the “book about who Samuel Adams was, why he is forgotten, why he should be remembered.”  --  Samuel Adams:  A Life, by Ira Stoll.  (Free Press, New York, NY.  Copyright 2008.  Pp. 23, 8, 9, & 11, respectively.)