I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like to be born in 1691. Plenty of people were born in 1691, but I wasn’t one of them. William Reed was, though, and I’m assuming it was a completely normal thing for him to be born as it was for many people who were born that year. Life was probably pretty boring in 1691. I certainly hope you don’t agree with that last sentence.
Life was anything but boring in 1691! The year started on a Monday. (Okay, that was boring.) Leisler’s Rebellion ended in March. Jacob Leisler had seized control of the
southern part of the colony of New
York in 1689, just after the Boston Revolt. He did so out of severe resentment of the
policies of the deposed King James II.
But the English did regain control, arrested Leisler in March of 1691,
and then hung him for treason in May.
Meanwhile, a fire broke out at the Palace
of Whitehall in London in April of 1691, destroying the Stone
Gallery. At one point, this was the
largest palace in Europe with over 1,500
rooms. In 1698 another fire broke out
and destroyed the rest of the palace, with the Banqueting House being the only
thing still standing today. Just imagine
a palace of 1,500 rooms, even larger than the Vatican . . .
And speaking of the Vatican, Pope Innocent XII became
the 242nd pope in July of 1691, succeeding Pope Alexander VIII. But just before that in May of 1691, the
Spanish Inquisition condemned and forcibly baptized 219 Xuetes (descendants of
Majorcan Jews) in Majorca. When 37 tried to escape, they were burned
alive at the stake. Talk about living on
the edge!
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| Topsham Cemetery, Mr. William Reed, born in 1691. |
Of course, the hero of our story, one Mr. William Reed, had
only just been born in 1691 and didn’t know about the Battle of Leuze in
September of that year when the English and Dutch were defeated by the French in the War of
the Grand Alliance. He didn’t know about
the Treaty of Limerick in October that guaranteed civil rights to Roman
Catholics (but was broken before the ink was dry). He also didn’t know that in 1691, Michel
Rolle would offer proof of Rolle’s Theorem (ask your resident calculus student
about it), or that the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Plymouth Colony would
be united (including territories that would encompass present-day Maine), or
that Mongolia would come under the rule of the Qing dynasty when the Khalkha
submitted to the Manchu invaders.
No, baby Reed was born into the very ordinary world of
1691. He died in 1773 at the age of 82,
three years before the colonies became the United States of America. He had no television, no cellphone, no Wii or
Xbox. There was no internet, and so he
had no way of knowing what people on the other side of the world were eating
for lunch. Yet somehow, somehow, he
managed to live to his 82nd birthday in his very ordinary world (which was
anything but). He was buried in the old Topsham Cemetery in Topsham, Maine.
Think about that the next time you panic and wonder what the
world is coming to and how dangerous our times are. The more things change, the more they stay
the same.
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| Headstone of Mr. William Reed, died 1773. |
