Recently, I have been working on the puzzle of the Acton Minutemen. As I’m working to put flesh and blood on people who lived over two hundred years ago, I scour the Internet and as many old books as I can get my hands on.
Specifically, I have been seeking the names of the Acton Minutemen that marched early on the morning of April 19th to join their brothers-in-arms on Punkatassett Hill in Concord.
How many were related? As the day wore on and men were killed and injured, how many of these men were dividing their attention between fighting and grief, fighting and worry about brothers and cousins and friends?
That’s what I was thinking about as I searched for the list of names.
But here’s what I found.
There were no lists. It was dangerous to be on a list. That was something so simple that I hadn’t thought of.
What I’m finding is that history is fragile.
That’s even true in our families. As one generation passes on and their stories disappear, we all lose. Young people think the older folks are boring and therefore they don’t take the time to sit with them and let them talk about their lives.
Or siblings fight over the estate of the deceased and in the warfare, destroy their own history.
And without our history, we don’t know who we are. And, thus, are easy pickins for tyrants.