tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post5312424969402267519..comments2023-11-03T03:45:54.322-04:00Comments on Fox Home: Simon Schama Should Be Ashamed, & So Should the BBCFoxessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post-59707488694608861412011-07-30T14:34:35.301-04:002011-07-30T14:34:35.301-04:00Ah, Charles M. Blow weighs in on this matter of fi...Ah, Charles M. Blow weighs in on this matter of fiction and revisionism in history, and the terrible harm it does to a society and a nature, this time provoked by the current flick, <i>Captain America</i>, and how it pretends segregation never existed in the WWII U.S. military. His grandfather was a member of the Buffalo Soldiers regiment -- that wasn't allowed to bear arms because, well, they were black.<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/opinion/blow-my-very-own-captain-america.html<br /><br />There are many comments.<br /><br />Love, C.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1680622593910991248.post-50279363384227607152011-07-30T12:21:13.959-04:002011-07-30T12:21:13.959-04:00The original instigator of this Samuel Fraunces fr...The original instigator of this Samuel Fraunces fraud was a novelist who wrote for kids -- the books were called Juveniles by the trade publishers back in the day. Judith Berry Griffon wrote a little book she titled <i>Phoebe the Spy</i>. It's all fiction, but little girls everywhere who have no heroic role in the American Revolution, which still begins to be taught in the 4th grade generally, went wild for this book. Griffon went even further in her imagination and made "Black Sam," Phoebe's father, a man of color. Now Black Sam was really Samuel Fraunces' nickname, but that by no means meant he was black. He might possibly have been mulatto -- there is speculation that he came to the lower 13 colonies -- landing originally in Philly -- from the Caribbean -- but the French, the Spanish or the English Caribbean, where, there is no indication of that in the speculations. Nor is there any proof for it. There is proof of him in Philly where he made a nice rep for himself as a creator of pastries and so on. Then he bought the building and land on the corner of Pearl Street and opened the Fraunces Tavern. The censuses of NYC of his time give the names of his wife and children, including his daughters', but there is NO Phoebe among them. The census classifies him as white.<br /><br />The Tavern did host much activity of clandestine nature during the era; Washington stayed there more than once, and it was in his establishment's Long Room that Washington threw his Farwell Dinner to his officers before heading back to Mt. Vernon after the Brits finally left. He did become Washington's steward -- NOT his cook, as Schama says, during his presidential years. He went to Philly then, with Washington, when the capital removed there. He sold the building to the U.S. government when we had our first election, and John Jay, Hamilton and Livingston had their offices there. Post the move of the U.S. government to Philadelphia the building went through many hard times -- at one point it was even a rope making establishment. Then the Sons of the Revolution bought it and that whole block, one of the few remaining bits that remains of pre-Revolutionary NYC, because the Brits burned it more than once, and fires were rampant during their occupation. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.frauncestavernmuseum.org/pdf/FTM%20School%20Program%20Previsit%20Materials.pdf" rel="nofollow"> This is what you can find if you google Phoebe Fraunces</a>, put up by the museum, which is a private institution, still owned by the Sons of the Revolution. (When I worked there the Sons were still resisting computers and the web.)<br /><br />Alas, though, google brings up far more hits that start with "The True Story of Phoebe Fraunces ...." And that is absolutely the fault of the writer. She wrote an afterward to the book in which she implies in every way she can without actually saying the words THIS IS A TRUE STORY that this was a true story. Little girls have burst into tears when hearing us tell them otherwise, thrown tantrums screaming we were liars and they want their Phoebe, who we are presumably hiding from them in the coal scuttle -- not that they would have a clue as to what a coal scuttle is.<br /><br />Love, C.Foxessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06754083123669916994noreply@blogger.com