The end of a thing is better than its beginning;
The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. – Ecclesiastes 7:8
When you appreciate history, enjoy a good story and love North Carolina you can’t do much better than an interesting lecture and elegant reception at Tarboro’s historic Blount-Bridgers House.
This past Tuesday evening was a great example of how important story is when we want to learn. Interestingly, research in the science of cognition and recall confirms that information is more readily retained when presented in the context of an engaging narrative.
John Lawson:
Local historian Billy Wooten used the vehicle of the compelling tale of explorer John Lawson (specifically his fateful and final 1711 Neuse River expedition) to paint a fascinating picture of North Carolina in the early 1700’s. And, by extension, the later work of artist, naturalist and ornithologist John Audubon (1785-1851).
Lawson was an explorer, a surveyor, a naturalist and a writer. Not only was he instrumental in establishing both New Bern and Bath, but his vivid descriptions of the Carolinas (in his landmark book A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709), helped fuel a rush of interest in the nascent colony.
A gifted writer, a keen observer and a “gentlemen” of means, Lawson was also ambitious and part of a cultural milieu that tended to accept without question the overarching assumption that if he could survey it then his country (Great Britain) was entitled to posses it.
The local Native American residents however – the Tuscarora – were savvy enough to discern the difference between sightseeing and a boatload of surveying equipment. Affronted and suspicious, they took the party captive.
Lawson was treated harshly, tortured and brutally killed, while his associate was released to tell the tale. Before long the bloody Tuscarora War settled the question.
The power of observation:
Audubon (pictured holding a rifle in the gallery, below) came into Billy Wooten’s teaching frame as a different kind of pioneer, one who took the work of the observer to new levels. His ambition to produce a complete pictorial record of North American bird life came close to realization, and his illustrations (compiled in The Birds of America) remain among the finest examples of the illustrator’s craft.
For me, in addition to enjoying a good evening of community and learning, the huge “take-away” was a sense of the newness of these United States.
White Europeans are still newcomers to North America, as are our brothers and sisters of every hue and from every corner of this world. I especially am a newcomer, turning a 1975 tourist visa into a student visa into resident alien status into a family into citizenship in 1985. And I am a brand new newcomer her in Tarboro.
In North Carolina I am no naturalist but I am a trained observer. I listen, I write, I take photographs and I learn.
And, like John Lawson, I am captivated by the beauty, the variety and the compelling story of this place.
Thanks, Billy Wooten, for stoking the fire of my interest. And special thanks to my parents – David and Grace – that I was not already born and exploring the Carolinas in the year 1700!
Peace and more peace, always – DEREK
