Tuesday, April 12, 2022

My ancestor James Carson, 1819-1859

My ancestor James Carson--the father of my dad's maternal grandfather--died on this day in 1859, after being accidentally shot during a hunting trip. He and his father and his aunt are buried in the Lorton Cemetery \in northeastern Fayette Co., IL. I wrote a long poem in which I used April 12 as a theme: so much happened on April 12. President Franklin Roosevelt died (1945), journalists began to report from Buchewald (1945), the first human went into space (1961), Dr. King was arrested in Birmingham, occasioning his famous Letter (1963), Lee's army folded their battle flags and received their parole papers (1865), and Lincoln told a friend about his troubling, portentous dream that he (Lincoln) was dead and lying in state in the White House. (Lincoln died three days later.) In 1859, John Brown was raising money on April 12th, Dickens was about to publish "A Tale of Two Cities," Darwin was rushing to finish "On the Origin of Species," and Darwin's friend, botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, was horrified that his children had used sheets of Darwin's manuscript for their coloring. What fun to discover all these facts and correlations! (Shameless commerce, LOL: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/.../walking-lorton.../)




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