Saturday, December 16 marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Of course there is plenty being written about it. Just search: Boston tea party 250th anniversary. Since that was the opening salvo in the American Revolution, I wondered what that meant for battle commander, George Washington, at Christmas. Valley Forge came to mind, but that was later. In 1776 it was all about the Battle of Trenton. Much has been written about it, but that Wikipedia link gives the basic facts.
Searching my books I found a dirty, worn little textbook from 1895, Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans by Edward Eggleston. It was discarded from Pulaski School in Hamtramck Public Schools and has the name of Dianne Miller written on the inside front cover. She's long gone, but this story was part of her upbringing and deserves being brought to her descendants and the rest of us today.
Two quick notes before the story: Eggleston hyphenated some words, I presume because they were long and unfamiliar to "Little Americans." This came from Project Gutenberg. It lets me preserve my own aging book. Unfortunately their copier didn't include the pictures from the unnamed illustrator (although I see a signature of "Ogden.") I will insert it from my own book. I also strongly recommend donating to Project Gutenberg (yes, I donate) whatever you can to keep this resource going as it does an exceptional job of "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" currently with over 70,000 free books.
Also everybody thinks of the famous painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware. I'm adding it although I have my doubts about Washington standing during it even though it wasn't a wide crossing. For more information go to 10 facts about Washington's crossing of the Delaware River.
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WASHINGTON’S CHRISTMAS GIFT.
Washington was fighting to set this country free. But the army that the King of England sent to fight him was stronger than Washington’s army. Washington was beaten and driven out of Brook-lyn. Then he had to leave New York. After that, he marched away into New Jersey to save his army from being taken. At last he crossed the Del-a-ware River. Here he was safe for a while.
Some of the Hes-sian soldiers that the king had hired to fight against the Americans came to Trenton. Trenton is on the Del-a-ware River.
Washington and his men were on the other side of the Del-a-ware River from the Hes-sians. Washington’s men were dis-cour-aged. They had been driven back all the way from Brook-lyn. It was winter, and they had no warm houses to stay in. They had not even warm clothes. They were dressed in old clothes that people had given them. Some of them were bare-footed in this cold weather.
The Hes-sians and other soldiers of the king were waiting for the river to freeze over. Then they would march across on the ice. They meant to fight Washington once more, and break up his army. But Washington was thinking about something too.
He was waiting for Christmas. He knew that the Hessian soldiers on the other side of the river would eat and drink a great deal on Christmas Day.
[Illustration: Marching to Trenton.]
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The afternoon of Christmas came. The Hessians were singing and drinking in Trenton. But Washington was marching up the river bank. Some of his bare-foot men left blood marks on the snow as they marched.
The men and cannons were put into flat boats. These boats were pushed across the river with poles. There were many great pieces of ice in the river. But all night long the flat boats were pushed across and then back again for more men. It was three o’clock on the morning after Christmas when the last Americans crossed the river. It was hailing and snowing, and it was very cold. Two or three of the soldiers were frozen to death.
It was eight o’clock in the morning when Washington got to Trenton. The Hessians were sleeping soundly. The sound of the American drums waked them. They jumped out of their beds. They ran into the streets. They tried to fight the Americans.
But it was too late. Washington had already taken their cannons. His men were firing these at the Hessians. The Hessians ran into the fields to get away. But the Americans caught them.
The battle was soon over. Washington had taken nine hundred prisoners.
This was called the battle of Trenton. It gave great joy to all the Americans. It was Washington’s Christmas gift to the country.
LoiS: Since that story is so short, here's "the rest of the story."
HOW WASHINGTON GOT OUT OF A TRAP.
After the battle of Trenton, Washington went back across the Delaware River. He had not men enough to fight the whole British army.
But the Americans were glad when they heard that he had beaten the Hessians. They sent him more soldiers. Then he went back across the river to Trenton again.
There was a British general named Corn-wal-lis. He marched to Trenton. He fought against Washington. Corn-wal-lis had more men than Washington had. Night came, and they could not see to fight. There was a little creek between the two armies.
Washington had not boats enough to carry his men across the river. Corn-wal-lis was sure to beat him if they should fight a battle the next morning.
Cornwallis said, “I will catch the fox in the morning.”
He called Washington a fox. He thought he had him in a trap. Cornwallis sent for some more soldiers to come from Prince-ton in the morning. He wanted them to help him catch the fox.
But foxes sometimes get out of traps.
When it was dark, Washington had all his camp fires lighted. He put men to digging where the British could hear them. He made Cornwallis think that he was throwing up banks of earth and getting ready to fight in the morning.
But Washington did not stay in Trenton. He did not wish to be caught like a fox in a trap. He could not get across the river. But he knew a road that went round the place where Cornwallis and his army were. He took that road and got behind the British army.
It was just like John waiting to catch James. James is in the house. John is waiting at the front door to catch James when he comes out. But James slips out by the back way. John hears him call “Hello!” James has gone round behind him and got away.
Washington went out of Trenton in the darkness. You might say that he marched out by the back door. He left Cornwallis watching the front door. The Americans went away quietly. They left a few men to keep up the fires, and make a noise like digging. Before morning these slipped away too.
When morning came, Cornwallis went to catch his fox. But the fox was not there. He looked for the Americans. There was the place where they had been digging. Their camp fires were still burning. But where had they gone?
Cornwallis thought that Washington had crossed the river by some means. But soon he heard guns firing away back toward Princeton. He thought that it must be thunder. But he found that it was a battle. Then he knew that Washington had gone to Princeton.
Washington had marched all night. When he got to Princeton, he met the British coming out to go to Trenton. They were going to help Cornwallis to catch Washington. But Washington had come to Princeton to catch them. He had a hard fight with the British at Princeton. But at last he beat them.
When Cornwallis knew that the Americans had gone to Princeton, he hurried there to help his men. But it was too late. Washington had beaten the British at Princeton, and had gone on into the hills, where he was safe.
The fox had got out of the trap.
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century. My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy discovering new stories.
At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection. I have long recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait, there's more!"
The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:
- David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
- Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain
- Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
- Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
- Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible through the Wayback Machine, described below, but the late Jackie Baldwin's wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for December 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
- Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
- World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/
- Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html. I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that becomes the only way to find them.
You can see why I recommend these to you.
Have fun discovering even more stories
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