THE LAST LORD OF PARADISE: 05/27/12

Sunday, May 27, 2012

MEMORIAL DAY–– HEROES ARE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

As the United States honors our fallen heroes this Memorial Day, most of us will think of the courageous men and women who fell in our most recent wars–Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and of course, World War II and World War I. These wars are and were distant conflicts, far from our shores.

Fortunately, and perhaps because of those distant wars, the US has not seen a battlefield on it's own land since the Civil War ended in 1865.

But our country was founded by hundreds of years of struggle, and defended by thousands of men and women during it's 236 year history, in battlefields we might call our backyard today. As Americans walk the streets of our cities and towns, as they drive past cemeteries, old homes and buildings, how many stop to read those large green and bronze plaques called historical markers.

The Michigan Historical Marker Website lists all the markers in Michigan. I've linked to a few below. Why not check it out for yourself. There's a google map with each marker and you might discover more heroism and history in your own neighborhood than you ever dreamed.

Located in Grosse Pointe
Fox Indian Massacre 1712

Battle of Bloody Run 1763

Located in Detroit's Elmwood Cemetery

War of 1812 Battle of Monguagon
Between Detroit and Monroe Michigan

War of 1812 Dead
Located downtown Detroit

If you'd like to honor some Civil War and yes, Revolutionary War veterans, look in the Newburg Cemetery, located in Livonia Michigan.

1778 Livonia Revolutionary War Veterans
Civil War Veterans Newburg Cemetery

Viv
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About This Blog

For more than one hundred sixty years our American midwest lived under the King of France. New France as it was called, stretched from Canada's Atlantic coast, west into Michigan and Wisconsin, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. First explored by fur trappers and Jesuit priests in the early 1600s, this vast territory was sparsely populated by French settlers called habitants. They survived by nothing but their own hard work, clinging to their farms, their language, their Catholic faith, and the Seigneurial form of government--a peasant-lord relationship used in France.

New France was surrendered to Great Britain in 1763 after the French and Indian War, but in 1803 this same land became part of the United States, under President Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. The descendants of these habitants remain today in places like Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

Vivian LeMay

THE LAST LORD OF PARADISE––GENERATION ONE JEANNE & ANTON

I remembered that autumn day when a party from the Compagnie Franche de la Marine visited our village in France. They came to recruit men for the war in New France and Papa allowed them into our orchard. I was only sixteen, enchanted by the handsome young marines in their blue uniforms...

It was the sparkle of energy in his blue eyes that caught me, and I smiled. His gaze was so intense I thought he'd pierced my soul and as he bowed to kiss my hand, his very presence dominated me. Anton had that affect on everyone he met.

We wed quickly and weeks later Anton was called to war. It was now nine years since I saw my husband. There were a few letters from him during the war, before France surrendered her lands in North America to the British--after the surrender, nothing. Our troops came home, but not Anton. I fought off the bitterness, and tried to hope, but there had been no word at all for the last five years.

Then last winter Monsieur Lavelle arrived at our chateau with a letter from Anton. His letter invited me to join him in the wilderness of Canada at his own secret settlement called Paradis. Anton sent Monsieur Lavelle for me, because he was clearing land, planting crops and building a home for me. It said nothing about where Anton was for all those years, but my husband was alive. He still loved me and wanted me with him. I thought only of Anton and the future as I packed my trunk that very day.

The Marquise Jeanne Reneau, 1766 on the shore of the Detroit River

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

MEMORIAL DAY–– HEROES ARE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

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