February 17, 2010
Anglo-American Relations As Seen Through One Family History
John Frederick
Author and Cleric
Minutes of the 19th Meeting of the 68th Year
President George Hansen called the meeting to order at 10:15; Don Edwards led the Invocation; and Jim Livingston read the Minutes from February 3rd on behalf of their author Alison Lahnston, on Leslie Burger’s talk, “Transforming Libraries.”
The February 10th meeting having been snowed out, President Hansen asked for a show of hands in favor of extending the Old Guard spring schedule by one week in hope that Gillett Griffin might be able to give his talk on May 26. The vote was solidly in favor.
The speaker introduced two guests, his wife Jean and their long-time friend Peggy Dodge
Number in attendance, 85
President Hansen introduced our speaker, John Frederick, by giving an overview of his transatlantic life and career: raised in Manhattan, a graduate of Deerfield Academy and of Princeton, John began conventionally enough as a thoroughgoing American. His talent as a crack pistol shot, however, propelled him to the London Olympic Games in 1948, with the US Olympic Pistol team. It is possible that his subsequent trajectory, to ordination as an Anglican priest and a ministry in the slums of London’s East End and later in Birmingham, were part of the same continuum. Be that as it may, John successfully camouflaged himself over the years as a Brit, not only by marrying an Englishwoman but also by spending three decades as a Church of England clergyman, during which time he came to hold such convincingly English titles as Rural Dean of Godstone and High Sheriff of Surrey. He came full circle in retirement, returning to the USA and his alma mater.
The subject of John’s talk was his recently published novel, A Royal American, which follows the fortunes during the years 1775-1787 of one of Frederick’s own forebears, James Ricketts, and his wife Sarah Livingston, whose large family, like Ricketts’ own, had ramifications on both sides of the Atlantic. The three main themes that Frederick set out to explore in his novel were his own family history; the extraordinary saga of the British Army’s 60th Regiment, in which Ricketts held a purchased commission from 1774 to 1782; and the “unsung story”of familial ties maintained before, during and after the conflict of what our speaker views as America’s “First Civil War.”
John is convinced that the classic “winners’ narrative” of American history, which still rules today, is critically deficient, in that it glosses over much evidence concerning the “losers,” their motives and actions, thus restricting the accurate telling of history as it actually occurred. John seeks to redress this balance in some measure, through a fiction he may want to claim is more honest to the facts than the history textbooks. During research for his book, for example, John uncovered considerable circumstantial evidence suggesting that the British may have been no less anxious than the Americans were only a few years after hostilities ended to close the transatlantic gap.
Frederick’s longstanding interest in military history in general and the history of the 60th regiment in particular—the largest in the British Army, and the only regiment authorized to take in foreigners, thus acquiring the character of an unofficial English “Foreign Legion”—informs his novel, and informed his entire presentation, with a wealth of fascinating and often surprising detail.
How many Old Guardians knew of the colorful cartographer Thomas Hutchins, the holder of a purchased commission in the British Army, who was sent to London to make maps at the outbreak of war, but was incarcerated when he declared himself for General Washington; once released and his resignation accepted, he hightailed it to France, where he ingratiated himself with Benjamin Franklin, no less, who urged his return to America, where he eventually became the first “Geographer General of the United States”?
Or how many of us had ever reflected on the benefits of the quaint 18th-century English practice of selling Army commissions? The fortunate consequence of this practice was that Britain’s army never developed a professional élite bred up in dynastic military families, for —drawn from the landed gentry and the independently wealthy—commissioned officers always had interests outside of the military itself. Result: Britain was never under internal threat by a military junker class. Nor by a standing army either, for following the Restoration of Charles II (1666) there was such a deep suspicion of standing armies, that the British Army, from that day to this, has been directly answerable, not to the Sovereign, but to Parliament, and must be “reconstituted” every year in order to be funded.
It became clear during the question period that, despite John’s interest in promoting his book, the audience was as eager to learn about the speaker’s personal history as about his novel, for President Hansen’s introduction had given us a tantalizing glimpse of John’s unusual career. We were rewarded with some delightful tid-bits, such as his curate’s tour of duty as a soapbox orator on Tower Hill. Many of us left the meeting both amused and bemused, by the vision of our own John Frederick debating theology with an Irish dockworker, a card-carrying Communist, and a Sikh.
A Royal American is available direct from the author for $16.
Respectfully submitted
Joan Fleming
The February 10th meeting having been snowed out, President Hansen asked for a show of hands in favor of extending the Old Guard spring schedule by one week in hope that Gillett Griffin might be able to give his talk on May 26. The vote was solidly in favor.
The speaker introduced two guests, his wife Jean and their long-time friend Peggy Dodge
Number in attendance, 85
President Hansen introduced our speaker, John Frederick, by giving an overview of his transatlantic life and career: raised in Manhattan, a graduate of Deerfield Academy and of Princeton, John began conventionally enough as a thoroughgoing American. His talent as a crack pistol shot, however, propelled him to the London Olympic Games in 1948, with the US Olympic Pistol team. It is possible that his subsequent trajectory, to ordination as an Anglican priest and a ministry in the slums of London’s East End and later in Birmingham, were part of the same continuum. Be that as it may, John successfully camouflaged himself over the years as a Brit, not only by marrying an Englishwoman but also by spending three decades as a Church of England clergyman, during which time he came to hold such convincingly English titles as Rural Dean of Godstone and High Sheriff of Surrey. He came full circle in retirement, returning to the USA and his alma mater.
The subject of John’s talk was his recently published novel, A Royal American, which follows the fortunes during the years 1775-1787 of one of Frederick’s own forebears, James Ricketts, and his wife Sarah Livingston, whose large family, like Ricketts’ own, had ramifications on both sides of the Atlantic. The three main themes that Frederick set out to explore in his novel were his own family history; the extraordinary saga of the British Army’s 60th Regiment, in which Ricketts held a purchased commission from 1774 to 1782; and the “unsung story”of familial ties maintained before, during and after the conflict of what our speaker views as America’s “First Civil War.”
John is convinced that the classic “winners’ narrative” of American history, which still rules today, is critically deficient, in that it glosses over much evidence concerning the “losers,” their motives and actions, thus restricting the accurate telling of history as it actually occurred. John seeks to redress this balance in some measure, through a fiction he may want to claim is more honest to the facts than the history textbooks. During research for his book, for example, John uncovered considerable circumstantial evidence suggesting that the British may have been no less anxious than the Americans were only a few years after hostilities ended to close the transatlantic gap.
Frederick’s longstanding interest in military history in general and the history of the 60th regiment in particular—the largest in the British Army, and the only regiment authorized to take in foreigners, thus acquiring the character of an unofficial English “Foreign Legion”—informs his novel, and informed his entire presentation, with a wealth of fascinating and often surprising detail.
How many Old Guardians knew of the colorful cartographer Thomas Hutchins, the holder of a purchased commission in the British Army, who was sent to London to make maps at the outbreak of war, but was incarcerated when he declared himself for General Washington; once released and his resignation accepted, he hightailed it to France, where he ingratiated himself with Benjamin Franklin, no less, who urged his return to America, where he eventually became the first “Geographer General of the United States”?
Or how many of us had ever reflected on the benefits of the quaint 18th-century English practice of selling Army commissions? The fortunate consequence of this practice was that Britain’s army never developed a professional élite bred up in dynastic military families, for —drawn from the landed gentry and the independently wealthy—commissioned officers always had interests outside of the military itself. Result: Britain was never under internal threat by a military junker class. Nor by a standing army either, for following the Restoration of Charles II (1666) there was such a deep suspicion of standing armies, that the British Army, from that day to this, has been directly answerable, not to the Sovereign, but to Parliament, and must be “reconstituted” every year in order to be funded.
It became clear during the question period that, despite John’s interest in promoting his book, the audience was as eager to learn about the speaker’s personal history as about his novel, for President Hansen’s introduction had given us a tantalizing glimpse of John’s unusual career. We were rewarded with some delightful tid-bits, such as his curate’s tour of duty as a soapbox orator on Tower Hill. Many of us left the meeting both amused and bemused, by the vision of our own John Frederick debating theology with an Irish dockworker, a card-carrying Communist, and a Sikh.
A Royal American is available direct from the author for $16.
Respectfully submitted
Joan Fleming