A Love Letter Across Centuries
Why the Fourth of July Hits Differently This Year
When I look at the calendar this time of year, my thoughts no longer drift toward the predictable rhythm of fireworks or backyard gatherings. This year, the Fourth of July feels entirely different. My perspective has shifted, fundamentally and permanently, because of the time I have spent lately walking through the records of our family’s past.
Before I began this deep, soulful dive into our genealogy, this holiday felt like a distant, historical event—a story about documents, generals, and maps. But today, it feels like a very intimate, living conversation. It is a love letter to the people who stood on the deck of a wooden boat, watching the shores of Scotland fade into the mist, trading the only home they had ever known for the terrifying, beautiful promise of the New World.
Our ancestors were among those first families who witnessed this country not as a grand nation, but as a vast, untamed possibility. They watched as states were formed and named, and they lived through the labor of turning wilderness into a home. They carried within them the weight of their own history, yet they looked forward with a stubborn, quiet hope that we would one day be here.
I have come to realize that this holiday is, at its heart, a story of profound disconnection. It was a radical, necessary divorce from the British Crown—a moment where our forebears decided that the rigid hierarchies of the old world were no longer compatible with the future they were carving out of the soil. They were not just protesting a King; they were making a monumental declaration that their lives, their labor, and their dreams belonged to the land they were standing on, not to a throne thousands of miles away. They broke the chains of the old world so that I could have the freedom to walk this road.
As I have traced our lines, I have also had to reconcile with the truth that the path to this moment was deeply, undeniably messy. To build what we have today, our ancestors navigated a history scarred by wars, the haunting reality of slavery, and the complex, often painful fractures of a nation coming into being. It was not a clean, paved road; it was a rugged, often shadowed journey through strife and injustice. I do not shy away from that messiness, nor do I ignore the scars on our history. I acknowledge them, because they are part of the soil upon which I stand.
Even in the shadow of that complexity, there was an undeniable grit. I think about the sheer audacity it took to choose an uncertain better over a familiar worse. I imagine them standing on the east coast shoreline, eyes wide, breathing in the scent of air that was entirely new. It was a journey filled with heartbreak, exhaustion, and the profound, aching loneliness of being a stranger in a strange land. Yet, they kept moving.
Sometimes, when I am driving through my own town, I catch myself glancing at the pavement and imagining the dirt road that was once there, or perhaps no road at all. I feel my steps on their steps. I realize that the life I live today is the harvest of seeds they planted in soil that was stubborn and unyielding.
I feel a profound, pulsing gratitude for that gamble. I want them to know that their struggle did not dissolve into the ether of history; it is alive in the way I tell our story, in the way I honor our name, and in the way I navigate this world with eyes wide open to both the beauty and the wreckage of the past.
If they could see me now—if they could see the legacy they left behind—I truly believe they would be impressed by how far we have come. They would see that the life they scraped out of that untamed wilderness blossomed into something that, for all its ongoing challenges, remains a testament to their ambition and their courage.
This year, the Fourth of July is my way of saying thank you. Thank you for the bravery to cross the water. Thank you for the strength to stay when it was difficult. I am carrying your story forward, honoring the full, complex truth of it, and I am loving you across the centuries. We are the living memory of your dreams, and I am so proud to be the one who remembers.
