Livin' the Dream?

If not, what's stopping us?

Photo by tom coe on Unsplash

And so it begins. . . the kick-off leading up to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The much-heralded launch of our nation's Semiquincentennial.

One branch of my family surely had reason for celebration. In the early 1700s, long before the Statue of Liberty beckoned refugees to this shore, they arrived seeking freedom from religious persecution in their home country of France.

These Calvinist Protestants, known as Huguenots, were driven out by Catholic- majority mobs in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes guaranteeing civil rights.

The family emigrated to Essex County, England for a decade or so before they appeared in the official records of Anne Arundel County, Maryland in 1707, when Robert Tevis married Susanna Davies at All Hallows Parish.

Identified as "the boatman," Robert may have transported passengers across the Chesapeake Bay, or worked as a boat builder. The couple had four children in the next eight and a half years, but Susanna died shortly after the last child was born. Robert struggled to support his family, but sometime before July 1721, he was jailed for failure to pay his debts.

His name is found in a petition for relief presented to the Maryland General Assembly on July 22, 1721. In 1722, a bill for relief and release of prisoners of debt was passed, requiring prisoners to surrender all property and possessions, excluding the clothes on their backs. Furthermore, any breach of this agreement would be punished by two hours in the pillory, and the severing of their left ear.

Robert died not long after his prison release, and by that time, his son also called Robert, deemed an orphan, had been given a home by a wealthy benefactor. According to family letters passed down, his benefactor eventually "fell on hard times," but Robert was able to support his foster parents.

It was an inauspicious beginning for the first American-born Tevis.

However, the younger Robert married in 1732, naming his first son Peter, after his benefactor. He became my fourth great grandfather. Robert "patented" 334 acres near the falls of the Patapsco River, calling it Tivis's Chance. By 1778, with the Colonies at war, he and three of his sons, including Peter, took the Oath of Fidelity. One son Robert, served as a captain in the Revolutionary War, raising a company that wintered at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78

After Peter left Maryland for Kentucky in 1792 with his two grown sons by his first wife, the family spread its roots westward, eventually to Iowa and as far as Arizona, California, and Texas.

It's a story of resilience and courage in the face of adversity, and similar stories have been passed down by generations of other American families.

Past Is Never Past

The story of America still is being written, and we're here today to bear witness. The question looms: Who will write it?

The 250th birthday of our country will be cause for celebration. It was an audacious undertaking, made possible only by a series of serendipitous circumstances and twists and turns of fate. First and foremost, the British monarchy underestimated the 13 colonies, and our citizen-soldiers. How could this rag-tag army prevail against the overwhelming British military superiority?

However, the military support and strategic advice of France and Spain were pivotal to routing the British, combined with Britain's supply chain challenges of fighting a war 3,000 miles across the ocean. The unconventional tactics of the colonists played a role, but Britain's resources also were stretched thin by other simmering foreign conflicts.

Following the decisive Battle of Yorktown in 1781, the colonists prevailed. Freedom! But independence raised a host of thorny issues: how would the debts of individual states be discharged? Was a stronger Federal government needed?

Born out of armed conflict, our new United States had its work cut out for it to live up to Thomas Jefferson's prose in the Declaration of Independence: self-evident truths, equality for all, and certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

The United States needed more than aspirational prose. A Constitutional Convention was called in 1787. Our new country became a nation of laws, including the separation of church and state, and three separate co-equal branches of government, with checks and balances. A compact was forged despite the Colonists' distrust of a powerful Federal government. It was facilitated by a Commander in Chief and President who reluctantly accepted the job, and preserved by an evolving acceptance that government was a force for good in the lives of its citizens.

These struggles are part of our nation's history. But, in many ways, they've re-emerged to re-ignite new political battlegrounds. What does it mean to be an American?

Crafting an American Mosaic

As our young country grew, the family history of "the boatman" and of multitudes of other Americans intertwined with the nation's history:

· As a girl growing up in Washington, D.C., Julia Ann Hieronymus and her family barely escaped with their lives during the War of 1812. In 1824, she married John Tevis, a Methodist-Episcopal circuit rider minister. She founded the Science Hill Female Academy near Shelbyville, Kentucky in 1825. This mother of six children felt chemistry and mathematics should take precedence over learning embroidery and sewing. Three thousand women attended until it closed in 1939. She wrote about it in her autobiography, Sixty Years in a School-room. There's a statue in her honor in Shelbyville, and the school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I visited there a couple of decades ago.

· John's brothers Joshua and Benjamin carved a different path, establishing mercantile businesses in Baltimore and Philadelphia. In the late 1980s, I visited the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art, and saw portraits of Joshua and his wife, Jane, as well as his father Robert Tevis, Jr., painted by well-known portrait painter Jacob Eichholz in 1827. (They're no longer on display.)

Joshua Tevis

· Other descendants of Robert, "the boatman" joined the journey westward. One Sunday night in 1964, I was watching Disney's "The Tenderfoot," when I saw in the credits that this three-part mini-series was based on a book, Arizona in the 50s by James Henry Tevis. He was my great-great uncle, who left St. Louis to work with the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, and build the stage station at Apache Pass, Arizona. Elected as a member of the 16th Arizona Assembly, the town of Teviston was named after him (now known as Bowie).

· In 1849 Peter's nephew, Lloyd, an attorney was working at a St. Louis insurance business when it burned to the ground. He and his brother decided to join the California Gold Rush. He became involved in land investments, banking and mining, and a stockholder in many companies. His estate was valued at $30 million in 1899. In 1972, I visited his grandson at his San Francisco home overlooking the Bay. When I rang the doorbell, a butler greeted me.

· Other family members remained in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. In the 1970s, Walter Tevis, a descendant of Peter's brother Nathaniel, was a guest lecturer at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He had written The Hustler in 1959, later made into a movie starring Paul Newman as "Fast Eddie" and The Queen's Gambit, Netflix's successful limited series

It's a story of a first generation immigrant jailed as a debtor giving rise to a second generation of farmers and soldiers, a third generation of ministers, attorneys, merchants, and many other hardworking American patriots. It's not uncommon.

Fewer Politicians Need Apply

Democracy in the United States of America always has been an aspirational endeavor. Today, according to a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, 76.7% of Americans believe our democracy is under threat.

However, they likely have divergent reasons. Some believe that America's openness to immigrants defines everything good about our identity as Americans. Others believe our openness to immigrants threatens the loss of our identity as Americans.

For most of our 249 years, Americans have been proud of our heritage as a nation of immigrants. Today we see deportations of immigrants on city streets, at workplaces, and the courthouse steps. All this is happening at the same time as the birth rate of Americans is plummeting. ("The birth rate crisis isn't as bad as you've heard, it's worse." The Atlantic, June 30, 2025)

This inverted demographic pyramid is predicted to pressure social security, healthcare, and pension funds as soon as 2055. Giving the bum's rush to immigrants mortgages the future of the next generation, and deprives our country of the diverse potential they offer.

Our Founding Fathers came up with a great solution to illegal immigration: a legislative body called Congress, empowered to pass comprehensive immigration reform. Our Founders would be appalled by this Administration's exercise of Federal powers, and the use of Executive Orders to roll back rights and circumvent the Rule of Law.

The recent budget reconciliation/domestic agenda legislation passed with the support of Iowa's entire elected delegation brings to mind this quote by James Freeman Clarke, theologian and author: "A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman of the next generation."

Colliding Values, Definitions, Facts

What lies ahead, now that our American dream is almost 250 years into the making? Are we livin' the dream?

If not, what's stopping us? Words synonymous with democracy, such as freedom, no longer seem defined in a universal way. Is freedom exploding noisy fireworks over the objections and sensitivities of your neighbors? Or is it carrying guns contrary to your community's norms and the definition of a well-regulated militia? To yet others, freedom is refusing to vaccinate themselves or their children despite public health risks.

The word, "opportunity" surely is understood in a shared sense. No? To some Americans, other people are budging in line ahead of the rest of us. If they're getting ahead, it must mean we're being cheated and missing out, right? Eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusiveness is a simplistic solution. Yet this simmering undercurrent of resentment is being exploited, and is the source of much of today's divisiveness. But we're not headed in the right direction with tax cut policies primarily benefiting the wealthiest Americans.

Since its birth, America has been known as the Land of Opportunity. This brings us back back to Tivis's Chance in the 1730s. . . and the quaint Colonial practice of naming tracts of land. The word "chance" wasn't unique. I found: Bell's Chance, Whitaker's Chance, John's Chance, Griffin's Chance, Betty's Chance –and many more.

According to University of Maryland research, chance was the most common "headword" for a tract of land. For many of our ancestors, land was much more than a resource; it was a symbol of independence, wealth, and the promise of a new life, or a second chance as newcomers. Chance implied a risk of failure, or success. Chance = opportunity.

Our early American ancestors were striving for opportunity, for the chance to compete and succeed. After all, they had risked nearly everything they had to grab the prized brass ring. All they asked in return was the chance to live their lives, and make their own choices for their families without fear of persecution. Not much has changed today.

There's much more to the American story. it's up to us to write it in a way that fulfills the promise of our fledgling nation.

Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash

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