Pieces of history abound in this place
where the Huidekoepers founded
a Unitarian church and seminary
some 200 years ago, after having
stolen land from the indigenous peoples
and having killed them by the thousands;
and around that same time
my 5th great-grandfather,
a physician, was buried in a nearby cemetery,
beneath a gravestone that reads, in part:
“The deceased embarked in the cause
of his country at the dawn of the Revolution
and served throughout all its privations
until its close with the confidence and esteem
of the great and good Washington.”
And so it is that shame and loyal service
are memorialized in places like this,
where the nation was forged by dreamers
and soldiers and the blood of the innocent.
