This week I was waiting for a book I have on hold, so I didn't want to commit to a longer book. Instead I listened to three
Who Was books for children. I decided to pick famous American characters from the early to mid 1800's. I thought it would be interesting to compare their lives.
Who Was Daniel Boone by S.A. Kramer
Daniel Boone is famous for creating a passage through the Appalachian Mountains to Kentucky. He was an adventurer, marksman, trapper and soldier. When I was a little girl, we saw these kinds of characters as heroes of American history. Now we are a little more sensitive to the injustices of western expansion, and how unfair colonists and pioneers were to native peoples. This book does a pretty good job of addressing the ethical issues while acknowledging that people from the time period had a different moral yardstick than we use today. Still, I finished the book feeling embarrassed and guilty about the way my ancestors treated others, rather than proud of it. (2006, 112 p)
Who Was Johnny Appleseed by Joan Holub
I found this a rather illuminating depiction of a character who had seemed more like a folk tale to me than a real person. I had always pictured Johnny Chapman as a kind of 19th century hippy, going around planting apple trees and talking with wild animals. That is a little bit true, but he was also an entrepreneur that took advantage of the government's rule that homesteaders had to improve their claims in order to keep them. He collected seeds from community apple cider presses, grew seedlings and then sold them to settlers. I didn't realize that Chapman actually, at various times, owned thousands of acers of orchards. He seemed to not be a very good businessman, though, because he always lost his land because of mismanagement. Because he was kind to native people and non-violent, he is less morally questionable than Boone. (2005, 112 p)
Who was Harriet Beecher Stowe by Diana Meachen Rau
I knew less about Stowe coming in to this biography than I knew about the other two. I knew that Uncle Tom's Cabin was very influential in promoting abolition, but I didn't understand exactly how successful it was. I found it interesting that Stowe was just a housewife who liked to write. She wrote short pieces for newspapers, and one nonfiction book for her sister's school. Uncle Tom's Cabin was her first novel, and it was an instant and huge success. It made her very wealthy and famous, and she used her fame to promote freedom for enslaved peoples. It was my favorite of the three biographies, maybe because I could relate with the protagonist better. (2015, 112 p)
One historical insight I gained from reading all three books is that the push to settle the American West was not only fueled by population growth. It was also the result of poor farming practices and over hunting that left the land depleted only a short time after the Europeans arrived. Another insight I had was that in the early 1800's almost everyone was on the edge of food insecurity. It didn't take much--a drought, an attack from hostile natives, depleted soil--to make it so whole communities didn't have enough to eat. That is one way that life in our country has improved.
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