America 250

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Dear Reader,

This is the last newsletter before America's 250th, so I want to spend it on the ancestor who started all of this for me — the first patriot I was ever able to actually prove was mine.

You know him already. Captain Edward Beeson, my fourth great grandfather, the patriot I wrote Fading Light for.

With the 4th right on top of us, I keep going back to a few passages from that book. So today, instead of another round of research, I want to just sit with some of his story — and his family's — for a minute. Here's how I put it in the author's note:

"Some people celebrate anniversaries with cake. I wrote a book. Captain Edward Beeson is my fourth great grandfather. When I discovered I could join the Daughters of the American Revolution through him, I made it my mission to write this novel in his honor before America's 250th anniversary."

Every Beeson in that book is real. The births, the marriages, the battles — they all came out of actual military records and Quaker meeting minutes. I just threw in a dash of imagination and a pinch of research.

Edward was raised Quaker, which meant he was raised to believe there's that of God in every man, even the one coming at you with a musket. He picked up a rifle anyway. And in the book, I wanted to know why. Not the textbook answer. The real one, sitting alone by a fire after his first kill:

"But Betty will grow up free. That thought rose on its own, quiet and firm. She will grow up in a country she owns. Not a subject. Not a tenant of a crown that sits across an ocean and cares nothing for what the Guilford County clay costs a man to work... land that was theirs by right of law and labour, a court that answered to its own people, a government that could be argued with and changed."

That's the part of the Revolution we like to celebrate. The conviction. The cost that felt worth it.

But the more I researched, the more I realized the war Edward fought wasn't the only one going on. His mother Elizabeth was fighting one too — right there on the home front, in ways the history books don't usually bother to write down.

When Greene's army and Cornwallis collided at Guilford Courthouse, the local meetinghouse — the plain wooden benches where Elizabeth had worshipped in silence her whole life — became a field hospital soaked in blood. Her husband Benjamin, a lifelong pacifist, told her tending the wounded broke Quaker discipline. She went anyway.

"'I must go to the meetinghouse,' Elizabeth said quietly. 'There will be wounded to tend.' Benjamin's head came up. 'Discipline bars giving aid to war.' 'Discipline also commands we answer that of God in every person,' ... 'Blood is on our benches, Benjamin. Blood is in our fields. I cannot sit idle while men die on ground we call sacred.' 'Then thee breaks with meeting.' 'Then I break with meeting.'"

And when Edward finally came home for good, it was the women who quietly carried what he brought back with him. His wife Selena confided in Elizabeth what none of the muster rolls or pension records will ever tell you:

"'I fear for his soul. But Mother Beeson... I fear for mine, too. When I look at him now, I do not see the boy I married in the Light...' ... Elizabeth rested one hand lightly on Selena's shoulder. 'Thee is not alone in bearing this. Many wives carry such burdens now.' ... 'We will watch over him together,' Elizabeth said softly. 'And we will pray that the Light finds him, even in his darkest hours.'"

That's the part of the Revolution we don't put on postcards. But it's just as true, and just as much a part of what it cost to hand us the country we're celebrating this weekend.

So however you spend America's 250th — fireworks, family, a plate of something off the grill — I hope you'll take a minute to think about the Edwards and the Elizabeths and Selenas. The ones who fought, and the ones who held everything together while they did.

Happy 250th, everyone. Please have a safe and Happy 4th and don't forget about the men that gave us this freedom!

If you want to spend part of your holiday with all of them, Fading Light is out now.

Until next time,

Whether you’re drawn to forgotten women, Scottish history, or simply a good story, I hope these conversations stay with you the way they’ve stayed with me.

Kristi

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