Settling Grudges with Turkeys and More from Early American History

Title: Settling Grudges with Turkeys and More from Early American History

Description: Today we are joined by Sarah Tanksalvala of the Rejects and Revolutionaries The Origins of America Podcast to talk about some of the strangest and most surprising episodes from pre-Revolutionary American History. Sarah will tell us Gunpowder Plot organizers, the last battle of the English Civil War and other fascinating and less known facts of early American history.

Original Publication Date:

Learn More About our Guest:
Sarah Tanksalvala host of Rejects and Revolutionaries: The Origins of AmericaPodcast
https://americanhistorypodcast.net/

You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen and subscribe at all these great places:

www.atozhistorypage.com
www.beyondthebigscreen.com

Click here to support Beyond the Big Screen!
https://www.subscribestar.com/beyondthebigscreen
https://www.patreon.com/beyondthebigscreen

Click to Subscribe:
https://www.spreaker.com/show/4926576/episodes/feed
email: steve@atozhistorypage.com
www.beyondthebigscreen.com
https://www.patreon.com/historyofthepapacy

Parthenon Podcast Network Home:
parthenonpodcast.com

On Social Media:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/atozhistorypage
https://www.facebook.com/HistoryOfThePapacyPodcast

Music Provided by:
“Crossing the Chasm” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image Credits:

Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Sarah Tanksalvala of the Rejects and Revolutionaries: The Origins of America Podcast. Links to learn more about Sarah and Rejects and Revolutionaries Podcast can be found at https://americanhistorypodcast.net/ or in the Show Notes.
You can now support beyond the big screen on Patreon. By joining on Patreon and Subscribe star, you help keep Beyond the Big Screen going and get many great benefits. Go to patreon.com/beyondthebigscreen to learn more.
A special thanks goes out to Alex at the Executive Producer level!
Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen.
More about the Parthenon Podcast Network featuring great shows like: Richard Lim’s This American President Podcast can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com.
You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
[00:00:00] Today, we’re joined by a very special guest and beyond the big screen alumni, Sarah tank, Savala of the rejects and revolutionary American history podcasts Sara’s podcast tells the story of American history from its very beginnings. These are all stories and events that are now widely known and are all, many of them are definitely stranger than fiction.
So you hear people talk about early American history and their. You know, talking about the revolutionary war era and it’s just like, no, no, it started so much before that and all that, this was going on, like all these debates and all of this, all these struggles were going on at the same time. And it was just like, or in that earlier time than it was just amazing.
We’re going to do this as sort of a top 10 list, the top 10 surprising facts about the 17th [00:01:00] century American history and moments that would definitely be stranger than fiction and deserve their own movie treatments. So who, what is your top? Your number 10. So we’re going from 10 to one. What’s your number 10 surprising fact about American history early colonial American history.
So, um, my 10th one is just the life of Pocahontas, his son, Thomas Rolfe. Um, we always think about, um, the story of Pocahontas in John, Ralph and John Smith and all of that that went on, but he actually lived this really interesting. Um, himself, and we don’t know that much about him, but it’s like through him that some 10,000 estimated people are descended from Pocahontas today.
And, um, what we do know about him, it’s really interesting though. Cause he was, um, so he was born, well, he was born in Virginia, but he grew up in [00:02:00] England. Um, Like John, Ralph and Pocahontas sit gone back to England and she had died there in 16, 17, and he had gone back to Virginia and he died five years later.
Um, and so he ended up being raised in England by an uncle of his. And then he ended up and then when he was 20, he moved back to America. And so he was sort of this half Palatan Indian who was raised in England and ended up going back to Virginia. And, um, I find that to be just fascinating to start with.
And then he ended up, um, he ended up meeting his uncle. He requested permission to meet with his power Putin uncle OB chonga knew who was the orchestrator of the 1622 massacre and of another massacre in 1643 or 44. When that second massacre happened in 1644. W [00:03:00] Thomas Ralf ended up actually leading troops against the power button for the English.
And so he ended up being this really sort of a fluent leading. Member of Virginia society, but he still clearly had enough, um, connection to his pallet and ancestry that he developed those relationships. But when the two sides went to war, he had some decisions to make. And I would’ve loved to know like what, you know, what went into those decisions, but we don’t know that about him, but I think he’d be a fascinating person.
To know more about, or to even imagine more about in some sort of a biography or biopic. So that’s our, that’s your number 10 now, number nine, you have a next one. The battle of the Severn. Yes. So that was really interesting because that, I mean, you could make an argument, maybe not the strongest argument, but you can make an argument that it was the last battle of the English [00:04:00] civil war, because, you know, Over the course of the English civil war, the English government has been, um, completely overturned.
The King’s been beheaded and then. The question comes, like what happens to each of these colonies and Maryland in particular was an extremely controversial colony because it had, um, well, it had a very strong Catholic foundation, which was really, really not liked in England at the time, especially by the Puritans who had gotten control in the English, civil war and Maryland always sort of, they always had to tread this.
Middle ground of like, not being Catholic, but being tolerant towards Catholics and. The question was, would this be enough by the time that the English civil war had ended? And there was a clear political divide in addition to the religious divide within Maryland, there’ve been increasing numbers of [00:05:00] Puritans in Maryland, especially after they got sort of kicked out of Virginia, Maryland gave them a place to stay, um, in the name of religious toleration, which became the sort of thing that.
That Maryland champion, the idea that Maryland championed in these early years. And so by the time that all of this has happened, the question became like would the new government of England, um, recognize the old government of Maryland, which was under this Catholic guy, uh, Lord Baltimore. And. In the time when that question was being asked, there were two groups of people who there were all these things happening.
There were two groups of people who ended up going. To, um, essentially to war with each other. They had one big battle in 1655 where like, um, 400 people showed up and that’s in a [00:06:00] colony, which at this point in time was, we don’t know exactly what the population was, but it would be between sort of a quarter and a fifth of the male population turning out to fight in this battle.
And ultimately, uh, ultimately the Puritans had a lot more military experience and they have a lot more organization and they had a lot more resources and they ended up just completely destroying the sort of Anglican Catholic Presbyterian, um, group. And, um, and then the question, the question still wasn’t answered.
And then the Pearson’s ended up just really, um, they ended up behaving sort of non admirably at the end of this battle. They ended up, uh, illegally executing for prisoners and they had sentenced 10 more to be illegally executed, but [00:07:00] then they, um, they, some people, some of the soldiers who had just come over from England and didn’t have as much of a personal investment in the fight and some of the women of the colonies.
Ask them to back down because a lot of this, the thing is a lot of this was really personal for people. Like they had known each other and they had had these animosities building up for 20 years at these, at this point. And, and so you can, it just, it went really downhill, but I think. How much the English civil war affected America is, is always something that I never really understood very well.
And listening to your podcast, it really, there was such a connection between the two, but then there’s also like you were saying that, that on the ground too, that these people hated each other personally, but then they have all these gripes too, that are the bigger picture gripes. So it’s really, it’s a really fascinating [00:08:00] interplay.
Oh, it is it’s, it’s amazing how much it it’s amazing. So much of what happened in America. So much of what we think about as being American would never have, um, would never have happened at all. If it weren’t for the English civil war, like the Puritans wouldn’t have, um, set up in new England as strongly as they did.