Cutting Edge Heritage!

Last Friday (Feb 17) I participated as a speaker at the Grand River Heritage Workshop, an annual event focusing on some aspect of – believe it or not – the heritage of the Grand River! The War of 1812 was the focus and I was extremely under-aged for this particular event, unlike the other heritage events I've know that were teeming with hipsters. I was surprised I didn't get carded.

To my surprise, however, it was CUTTING EDGE. Seriously. It wasn't a splash of Loyalist-leaning propaganda, awash with valiant war memories, or an undercurrent of nostalgia for a supposedly buff military, but it was largely geared toward acknowledging the pain and devastation of war. It acknowledged that loyalty was not something taken for granted. It should not have been a surprise to me since the Grand River watershed saw little of war's glory.

[photo of c.1790s cabin of Daniel and Elizabeth (Miller) Hoover near Rainham]

The theme was 'Divided Loyalties' and my presentation looked primarily at Mennonites and Brethren in Christ (very few Quakers lived within the watershed at that time). It was natural for me to deal with the theme of divided loyalties because Mennonites and Brethren seemed in many cases to have been all too ready to be of service to whichever side of the war came knocking.

They simply weren't interested in resisting evil. Their loyalties were divided between nations, but also their primary loyalty was to their faith commitments. For example there was Daniel and Elizabeth (Miller) Hoover who hosted First Nations warriors, American raiders, and soldiers from both sides of the war. Their home is depicted above. She must have kept quite an interesting guestbook. I can only imagine what the graffiti on the outhouse looked like!