Last month I was contacted by an American lady who told me that Roger
Conant is her husband's tenth great-grandfather through his mother's side of
the Brewer family.
A view of Roger Conant's home village of East Budleigh, Devon; the mill house, his birthplace, sadly no longer exists
She was keen to know how the villagers of East Budleigh are thinking of marking the 400th anniversary of Roger Conant’s arrival in America.
“Every so often I investigate what's on the internet about him in order to inform our grandchildren of their New England heritage,” she told me. In particular she wants her ten-year-old granddaughter to know about Roger Conant.
Well, I think that’s great that grandparents should be helping the young to find out about such remarkable people of the past. So many issues from Roger Conant’s lifetime are current in today’s vexed political climate: freedom of thought, respect for the culture of others, social responsibility to name but a few.
And Conant himself comes across from descriptions of him over the centuries as an admirable kind of public figure. What a hero! Definitely not a witch!
“Where are the Roger Conants among today’s leaders?” I ask myself.
The best thing I could do was to add the American lady to my bloglist of interested people who will receive updates on the progress of Conant 400 at https://conant400.blogspot.com
I added that I would be more than happy to email her any good resolution photos of images that she sees on the blog, and which might be useful, for example, for illustrating a school project that her granddaughter might want to tackle.
I had to admit that our very small steering group of villagers, which meets in the local Sir Walter Raleigh pub, has only just been formed. We have plenty of time to discuss what might be staged in 2023 as a tribute to East Budleigh’s other hero. In due course we may reveal what our plans are via this blog.
So if you are not already receiving updates by email from me, just get
in touch and I’ll add you to my bloglist.
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