From the Academy: The Old Settlers

One is informed by all sorts of sociological folk and advanced legislators, by sophisters, calculators and economists, that people of comparative poverty, “cultural deprivation,” membership in an ethnic minority, and rural upbringing confront almost insuperable obstacles to personal achievement. Subsidize them and_ direct them! If the “underprivileged” are told this long enough, doubtless they will come to think that they might as well have the game as the name. But I know of so many exceptions te this rule that I doubt whether it is a sound generalization at all. Really, adversity may be good for the soul; and strong natures grow the stronger at a challenge. I am not of the number of of those who think that a universal suburbia, properly subsidized and planned and integrated and insulated against all risk, would bring to consummate fruition the person and the republic. I think of my Mecosta neighbors, the Old Settlers. The only book in which you may read something about the Old Settlers © is my friend Dr. Richard M. Dorson’s Negro Folktales in Michigan (Harvard University Press, 1956). It was your servant who led Professor Dorson to this lively community, a century old and thriving still. In the years which followed hard upon the Civil War, the ancestors of the Old Settlers arrived in Mecosta ‘County, Michigan, from Ontario and Ohio; they came in covered wagons, and they took up homestead land, and they settled round the crossroads which are now the villages of Mecosta and Blanchard and Remus and Milbrook. These farmers were enterprising colored people, emancipated or escaped slaves, some of them with white wives whom they had married in Ontario. Our Mecosta soil is sandy and unpromising; much of this region is lake and swamp. But it takes a person of intrepidity and fortitude to separate himself from the Peculiar Institution, travel hundreds of miles to a foreign land, acquire some capital, and hew a home out of the wilderness. Theirs was a good stock, the Old Settlers’; and it endures. In summer—on Emancipation Day formerly, though now the feast is movable—the people who call themselves the Old Settlers hold in Mecosta and at Schoolsection Lake Park (originally a homestead of the Berry family, one of the principal septs among the Old Settlers) their annual reunion. Some patriarchs are present who can tell the old tales brought up from the South. The younger generations migrated to the industrial cities of Michigan, for the most part; but these come back to Mecosta for this grand occasion.

Doubtless my sociological friends will remark, at this point, that I am describing a _ stagnant subculture, possibly picturesque, but fundamentally lamentable. Nay, not so, Herr Professor. For out from this rural backwater and example of cultural lag have come some men and women of remarkable achievement. Consider Dr. Merse Tate, half-sister of my neighbor Mr. Hershel Cross, one of our abler Mecosta farmers. Born at Blanchard, a very little place indeed, she proceeded to leadership in her high school classes, presently obtained her bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University (with very high honors indeed), became a master of arts of Columbia University, and next a bachelor of letters of Oxford University (the first American of color to receive a research degree there). Her earned doctorate is from Radcliffe College, and she is an honorary doctor of letters. She has written six important books, most of them published by university presses; has traveled almost everywhere; has been a Fulbright lecturer in India; and has long been professor of history at Howard University. It would take some paragraphs to record her other distinctions. (As Dick Dorson reflected, on learning from Hershel Cross of Dr. Tate’s achievements, “I don’t suppose I’ll get many Br’er Rabbit stories here.’’) Or take Judge John T. Letts, a gentleman from the Old Settlers. When twenty-four years old, he took an athletic scholarship at Wilberforce University, and from that time on made his way upward, despite the pressing poverty of his family. As the years passed, he became an army officer, an official at a vocational school, a student at Boston University Law School, a lawyer, a parole officer, an assistant prosecutor in Grand Rapids, and a municipal judge there. Last November he was elected to the circuit court—on the day that his old friend Edward Brooke, an army comrade, was elected to the United States Senate. Our Old Settlers were pleased, but not surprised, that the great-grandson of an escaped slave (who had run a restaurant in Mecosta’s county seat) should go far. So I doubt very much whether centralized benefaction and _ direction would open wider horizons to the Old Settlers, or to the rest of us here at Mecosta. I doubt, indeed, whether such kindness would make us stronger. (It was the National Guard company from Mecosta County which, in the Second World War, forced its way over the Owen Stanley Mountains in New Guinea to take the Japapanese posts on the north coast, one of the most remarkable military exploits of this century.) The oldest of our Old Settlers, Mrs. Mary Clarissa Pointer, recently celebrated her hundred and _ third birthday. She has a good deal of dignity and wisdom, and is full of tales no one else can tell. If this old lady is culturally deprived, who is culturally affluent? The able make their way not merely despite poverty, but because of it; and those who choose the pleasant routine of country life may be wiser than the ideologues of the Great (or Tapioca Pudding) Society.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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One is informed by all sorts of sociological folk and advanced legislators, by sophisters, calculators and economists, that people of comparative poverty, “cultural deprivation,” membership in an ethnic minority, and rural upbringing confront almost insuperable obstacles to personal achievement. Subsidize them and_ direct them! If the “underprivileged” are told this long enough, doubtless they will come to think that they might as well have the game as the name. But I know of so many exceptions te this rule that I doubt whether it is a sound generalization at all. Really, adversity may be good for the soul; and strong natures grow the stronger at a challenge. I am not of the number of of those who think that a universal suburbia, properly subsidized and planned and integrated and insulated against all risk, would bring to consummate fruition the person and the republic. I think of my Mecosta neighbors, the Old Settlers. The only book in which you may read something about the Old Settlers © is my friend Dr. Richard M. Dorson’s Negro Folktales in Michigan (Harvard University Press, 1956). It was your servant who led Professor Dorson to this lively community, a century old and thriving still. In the years which followed hard upon the Civil War, the ancestors of the Old Settlers arrived in Mecosta ‘County, Michigan, from Ontario and Ohio; they came in covered wagons, and they took up homestead land, and they settled round the crossroads which are now the villages of Mecosta and Blanchard and Remus and Milbrook. These farmers were enterprising colored people, emancipated or escaped slaves, some of them with white wives whom they had married in Ontario. Our Mecosta soil is sandy and unpromising; much of this region is lake and swamp. But it takes a person of intrepidity and fortitude to separate himself from the Peculiar Institution, travel hundreds of miles to a foreign land, acquire some capital, and hew a home out of the wilderness. Theirs was a good stock, the Old Settlers’; and it endures. In summer—on Emancipation Day formerly, though now the feast is movable—the people who call themselves the Old Settlers hold in Mecosta and at Schoolsection Lake Park (originally a homestead of the Berry family, one of the principal septs among the Old Settlers) their annual reunion. Some patriarchs are present who can tell the old tales brought up from the South. The younger generations migrated to the industrial cities of Michigan, for the most part; but these come back to Mecosta for this grand occasion.

Doubtless my sociological friends will remark, at this point, that I am describing a _ stagnant subculture, possibly picturesque, but fundamentally lamentable. Nay, not so, Herr Professor. For out from this rural backwater and example of cultural lag have come some men and women of remarkable achievement. Consider Dr. Merse Tate, half-sister of my neighbor Mr. Hershel Cross, one of our abler Mecosta farmers. Born at Blanchard, a very little place indeed, she proceeded to leadership in her high school classes, presently obtained her bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University (with very high honors indeed), became a master of arts of Columbia University, and next a bachelor of letters of Oxford University (the first American of color to receive a research degree there). Her earned doctorate is from Radcliffe College, and she is an honorary doctor of letters. She has written six important books, most of them published by university presses; has traveled almost everywhere; has been a Fulbright lecturer in India; and has long been professor of history at Howard University. It would take some paragraphs to record her other distinctions. (As Dick Dorson reflected, on learning from Hershel Cross of Dr. Tate’s achievements, “I don’t suppose I’ll get many Br’er Rabbit stories here.’’) Or take Judge John T. Letts, a gentleman from the Old Settlers. When twenty-four years old, he took an athletic scholarship at Wilberforce University, and from that time on made his way upward, despite the pressing poverty of his family. As the years passed, he became an army officer, an official at a vocational school, a student at Boston University Law School, a lawyer, a parole officer, an assistant prosecutor in Grand Rapids, and a municipal judge there. Last November he was elected to the circuit court—on the day that his old friend Edward Brooke, an army comrade, was elected to the United States Senate. Our Old Settlers were pleased, but not surprised, that the great-grandson of an escaped slave (who had run a restaurant in Mecosta’s county seat) should go far. So I doubt very much whether centralized benefaction and _ direction would open wider horizons to the Old Settlers, or to the rest of us here at Mecosta. I doubt, indeed, whether such kindness would make us stronger. (It was the National Guard company from Mecosta County which, in the Second World War, forced its way over the Owen Stanley Mountains in New Guinea to take the Japapanese posts on the north coast, one of the most remarkable military exploits of this century.) The oldest of our Old Settlers, Mrs. Mary Clarissa Pointer, recently celebrated her hundred and _ third birthday. She has a good deal of dignity and wisdom, and is full of tales no one else can tell. If this old lady is culturally deprived, who is culturally affluent? The able make their way not merely despite poverty, but because of it; and those who choose the pleasant routine of country life may be wiser than the ideologues of the Great (or Tapioca Pudding) Society.