“The past isn’t dead, if fact, it’s not even past.”William Faulkner’s memorable aphorism has often been cited in reference to Southern history and the War Between the States. Even though the last Civil War veteran died over fifty years ago, many of the so-called baby-boom generation were taught about their parent’s, grandparent’s and great-grandparent’s sacrifices which brought peace and prosperity to post-war generations.

Unfortunately, more and more people today are losing touch with their past; the number of history courses taught in schools continues to decline. The interpretive content of American history courses has shifted away from political and military history and tended toward courses that are nothing more than propaganda for various political or social causes. These changes, I believe, are neither universal nor permanent. There are several indicators that Americans hunger for a connection with their past and they respond with warmth and interest when offered alternatives to the prevailing intellectual historical ethos.

What Faulkner observed sixty years ago lives on in real people if you take the time to look for them and have the wisdom to ask questions about their past. For instance, many Americans have come to realize in recent years, the accelerating rate of the passing of the World War II veterans. One estimate claims that about a thousand of them die every day in the United States. It has oft been said that when a man dies, a thousand stories die with him; if they have not been told they are lost forever. What a treasure trove of dedication, sacrifice, honor, cowardice, mistakes, and triumphs will go the way of all flesh if we do not capture those accounts and experiences now. There are men and women across the nation that have dedicated themselves to saving those stories, and we at the Circa History Guild seek to be among those preservationists. At the same time, we want to preserve the context in which our forbearers lived and to understand the times and events of the nation and the world of the past.

One of the greatest living examples of a man for whom the past is present, lives at his ancestral home in Charles City County, Virginia. Mr. Harrison Tyler and his siblings are the grandchildren of President John Tyler (1790-1862). As the 12th President of the United States, John Tyler was a man of firsts-the first Vice President to become President upon the death of the sitting President (In fact, Tyler was humorously known as “His Accidentcy”). He was the first President to marry in office, after his first wife died during his Vice-Presidency. He was a President whose party abandoned him because he vetoed legislation on Constitutional principles even though it had been passed by the Whig-controlled Congress. John Tyler was the only President to die not a citizen of the United States-he was serving as a congressman in the Confederate Congress. He was the first President to have a veto overridden. Tyler also takes the palm for the largest family, having fathered fifteen children! One of his sons, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, born in 1859, married for the second time in his 60s, and two of his children are still living, including Harrison Ruffin Tyler, the current denizen of Sherwood Forest, President John Tyler’s home.

To meet Mr. Tyler is to step back in time, for he can regale a group with stories of his father (a historian and President of The College of William and Mary),grandfather (the President), and great-grandfather (John Tyler, Sr. 1730-1802, Governor of Virginia, college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and a founding father of our nation). It is as if those ancestors and the events of their times were but yesterday, rather than two hundred years ago. Harrison Tyler had two first cousins shot in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863!

While many Americans do not know who their grandparents were and most have no clue about the lives of their great-grandparents, Harrison Tyler provides an example of a man who knows and appreciates his heritage and has self-consciously pursued the detailed knowledge of his family’s past. He is zealous to share it with the next generation; his son William and daughter-in-law Kay are keeping the family traditions alive and teaching their own children to appreciate their Tyler history.

The Circa History Guild salutes and honors the Tylers, but, more than that, wants to encourage and assist anyone to discover the history of their family, regardless of what threads they have woven in America’s historical tapestry.

Bill Potter