New Column Explores History Leading Up to 250th
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series of columns looking at American history from the perspective of a presidential historian and a museum archivist.
“My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.”
Such is the start of one of my favorite works of American literature, the Autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant.
His words ring true. My ancestors came to the Colonies in 1635 when William Chandler arrived and settled in Roxbury, MA. His descendants have included two presidential cabinet secretaries, mayors, one of founders of the Republican Party, diplomats, two rear admirals and a U.S. President. To say the Chandler family is All-American is an accurate statement.
I love American history and I’m excited to be doing a series this upcoming year on the places, graves and people who perserve them. All of this as a lead up to America’s 250th birthday.
Yet I’m in the unique position of also being an immigrant and a naturalized citizen. Being adopted, my parents were born here in the ‘40s, yet I was born in Taiwan, and grew up in many different places. Consequently, inside there is what would, in today’s world, be seen as a paradox: I have the world view of an international, yet the patriotism of someone who grew up with the strong identity of an American.
When I moved here permanently in 1999, I immediately set out to understand the nature of American national identity and patriotism. After all, as a missionary kid, I’ll always have itchy feet. That journey has taken me from sea to sea, and many places in between. From the Sandie mountains in high deserts of New Mexico to valleys in New England carved out by retreating Ice Age glaciers, I have traveled. From the Texas Hill Country, to cemeteries under parking lots in New Jersey. As a freelance press photographer, I have photographed governors, a King and walked in the footsteps of the first American Pope. One of the more unique aspects is that as of this writing, I’ve been to all 40 presidential gravesites, all 49 graves of the Indiana Governor’s graves (including territorial governors).
Lessons I have learned? Well join me in the upcoming weeks as I reflect on the last 25 years of journeys and perhaps I can help answer, “what can history say about us Americans?”