COMMODORE JOSHUA BARNEY
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Joshua Barney HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1759
July 6, Friday: Joshua Barney was born in Maryland.
British forces under Colonel John Prideaux and Sir William Johnson landed four miles from Fort Niagara.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Joshua Barney “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1775
Joshua Barney would be serving in the Continental and the Pennsylvania navies, until 1784. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1782
April 8, Monday: The town of Concord disbursed to Brister Freeman more than £2 for “keeping” Thomas Cook. (There were no almshouses in Massachusetts until the year 1790. By March 1784 Thomas Cook would have died and the town would vote to sell his house. Where it was that Freeman would live between his years at the Cuming estate and his inhabitation of Walden Woods is unknown. In 1783, Freeman would again provide board for an impoverished Concord resident — he would receive more than £2 from the town for “keeping” Betty Russel [sic].)
Joshua Barney’s Hyder Ally captured General Monk.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
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1794
June 5, Thursday: Joshua Barney declined a commission in the United States Navy.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Joshua Barney “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1796
Joshua Barney was appointed a commodore in the French Navy.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Joshua Barney “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1813
Our national birthday, Sunday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, or Hathorne’s, 9th birthday. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
4,000 of our slaves would be able to depart from their American servitude by way of an arrangement with the Royal Navy during the War of 1812. On the face of it, this was the largest emancipation between the revolution in Haiti in the 1790s and the British colonial abolition of the 1830s (though the emancipation in New York state on July 4, 1827 is a possible contender). These freedom fighters began to leave American waters left in this month and the last would have departed by April 1815. Just under 1,000 would settle in Trinidad, with the remainder settling in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — apart from a few who would wind up in Bermuda and a score or so who would reach England.
Joshua Barney proposed a plan for the defense of Chesapeake Bay.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 4 of 7 M / I staid from Meeting this forenoon for my H to go & took care of our little boy — In the Afternoon went - M Morton preached & C R Prayed — Walked out with D R to J Dennis & took tea & set the eveng very agreeably. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 20, Friday: Joshua Barney was appointed as acting master commandant.
From this point until May 1814, he would be outfitted a flotilla of barges and gunboats.
Creek Indians overran Fort Mimms in Baldwin County, Alabama. Only 50 of the 500 defenders escaped.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Joshua Barney HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1814
April 25, Monday: Joshua Barney was appointed as a captain in the Flotilla Service.
King Louis XVIII of France arrive in Calais, from Britain.
The Principality of Piedmont was restored to the Kingdom of Sardinia as King Vittorio Emanuele I returned from Sardinia to Turin.
June 26, Sunday: At the port of Dover, Tsar Alyeksandr of Russia departed from Britain.
Joshua Barney’s flotilla escaped a St. Leonard’s Creek blockade. Until August, they would be able to evade the British. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 11, Thursday: A newly constructed brig carrying 20 guns was launched at Vergennes and given the name Eagle.
August 12, Friday: Hanover was created a kingdom in the name of George III.
August 22, Monday: Joshua Barney’s men scuttled their flotilla at Pig Point, Maryland. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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August 24, Wednesday: Viscount Castlereagh arrived at Paris, where he would be meeting with King Louis XVIII and Talleyrand before traveling on to Vienna.
As part of a conflict that was essentially a continuation of the American Revolution by way of a dispute over the seas and over the border of Canada, on this day and the following one a British army defeated hastily assembled defenders of Washington DC at Bladensburg, Maryland, just north of the capital. The British would go on to burn Washington, including the White House and most of the 3,076 books and 53 maps, charts, and plans of the Library of Congress, along with paintings of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by Madame Vigee Lebruin. They would also put the chambers of the House and the Senate in Washington DC to the torch — but beware, it is sheer mythology that the books were used as kindling for the fire in the legislative chambers.1
Waldo Emerson would reminisce in his journal in about April or May of 1856 about a British-invasion-of- Boston scare that had occurred in about this period of his childhood:2
I have but one military recollection in all my life. In 1813 or 1814, all Boston, young & old, turned out to build the fortifications on Noddle’s Island; and, the Schoolmaster at the Latin School announced to the boys, that, if we wished, we might all go on a certain day to work on the Island. I went with the rest in the ferry boat, & spent a summer day; but I cannot remember that I did any kind of work. I remember only the pains we took to get water in our tin pails, to relieve our intolerable thirst. I am afraid not valuable effect of my labor remains in the existing defences.
Because of the perceived danger that the English navy would besiege Boston, the Emerson family then moved to Concord. Ralph Waldo attended the wooden schoolhouse in Concord square. He recited not only in school but also from the top of the sugar barrel in Deacon John White’s store nearby. Here is a silhouette of the “pilgrim profile” of Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who would loom large in his life though she stood 1.There is a patriotic or accommodative story in which the invading British army is persuaded not to burn the Library of Congress, by being reminded of the ignominy of the burning of the Library of Alexandria in antiquity. This story sacrifices historical accuracy to patriotism or to accommodationism. Contrast this with another story which has a much greater likelihood of having been the truth, that the British were retaliating to the 1812 burning of the Canadian congressional library in York (Toronto) by an American expeditionary force. 2. We do not know whether Emerson was referring here to Head Master William Bigelow or to his successor Benjamin Apthorp Gould, a senior at Harvard College, for during 1814 after nine trying years Head Master Bigelow was being replaced in an attempt to restore order and scholarship (many features of the Boston Latin School of today –among them the “misdemeanor mark” and the practice of declamation– would be initiated during this disciplinary period.
I (Austin Meredith) have my own recollections similar to this, from World War II in San Diego CA. Have you seen the movie “1943”? –It is exceedingly accurate to the spirit of the times, while the necessary task of routing all Americans of Japanese ancestry into the new concentration camps in the inland desert was still going on, and the utter cooperation of the civilian (white) population, real Americans, was vitally needed by our government authorities. As a 6-year-old my parents had me in a class digging lines of foxholes across a football field, and marching around the parade ground of a religious school where my father was Chaplain, named Brown Military Academy, with a wooden rifle. I lost my first baby tooth when I Left-Ho’d in formation when I should have Right- Ho’d –because the butt of the “rifle” of the boy next to me in formation slapped me up alongside the head– and I sat down on the parade ground and began to cry and was afraid I was going to be courts-martialed. The vicious little yellow Japs were going to invade, the Hearst newspapers were reporting that already they might be lurking offshore in their submarines, just out of sight, and in a port city on the Pacific Ocean we were on the front lines and we needed to be utterly ready to defend our soil with our blood. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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at most 5 feet 0 inches tall, as she appeared in her youth, probably before her return to Malden, Massachusetts:
THE DEACONS OF CONCORD Joshua Barney was wounded and captured at Bladensburg, Maryland. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1815
April 30, Sunday: Commodore Joshua Barney’s Chesapeake Bay flotilla was being disbanded.
At about this point in time Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft was again becoming preggers (either by Percy Bysshe Shelley or by the other male of this swinging set, Thomas Jefferson Hogg — none of those participating HDT WHAT? INDEX
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seemed to much care). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1818
December 1, Tuesday: Joshua Barney died near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley settled down in Naples while Percy was finishing PROMETHEUS UNBOUND: A LYRICAL DRAMA (which would be published during August 1820). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1832
Mary Barney’s ABIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE COMMODORE JOSHUA BARNEY.
COMM. JOSHUA BARNEY
(Commodore Barney, a hero of the War of 1812, had died in 1818. Mary was a daughter-in-law. David Henry Thoreau would peruse this in 1834.)
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Joshua Barney HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1834
March 6, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Mary Barney’s ABIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF THE LATE COMMODORE JOSHUA BARNEY (1832).
WAR OF 1812
COMM. JOSHUA BARNEY
He also checked out the 1st of the 2 volumes of Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane’s JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE AND TRAVELS IN COLOMBIA DURING THE YEARS 1823 AND 1824 (London: Henry Colburn, 1825).
COCHRANE IN COLUMBIA VOL. II (NOT CONSULTED)
“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson HDT WHAT? INDEX
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York, in Upper Canada, was incorporated as the city of Toronto.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 6th of 3rd M 1834 / A tranqiuil pleasant day - for which I desire thankfulness of heart RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS The author, in Columbia (in drag?):
In this volume Thoreau would learn of the poison frogs Phyllobates terribilis, Phyllobates bicolor, and Phyllobates aurotaenia occurring from Nicaragua to about 20 degrees latitude in South America. The family Dendrobatidae includes at least 170 species of frogs only these three of which, called “rana de veneno” locally, can produce the extraordinary toxins, more potent than curare, that are used by natives to tip their blowgun darts. Cochrane encountered these frogs as he crossed the western Andes on foot.3 Those who use this poison catch the frogs in the woods, and confine them in a hollow cane, where they regularly feed them until they want the poison, when they take one of the unfortunate reptiles, and pass a pointed piece of wood down his throat, and out one of his legs. This torture makes the poor frog perspire very much, especially on the back, which becomes covered with a white froth: this is the most powerful poison that he yields, and in this they dip or roll the points of their arrows, which will preserve their destructive power for a year. Afterwards, below this white substance, appears a yellow oil, which is carefully scraped off, and retains its deadly influence for four to six months, according to the goodness (as they say) of the 3. The blowgun darts were about eight inches in length, with a spiral groove cut into their pointed tip to convey the poison. The blowguns were of reed, about 12 feet in length. Maximum effective range was approximately 100 yards. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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frog. By this means, from one frog sufficient poison is obtained for about fifty arrows.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: May 1, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
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