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These days online, I'm less willing to put
personal information online. The days of the early
net and web were exciting and you felt free of any
threats. It was a small community in vast spaces,
much like the frontier days of the American West.
Back then the West was populated by a diverse group
of people who had to adhere to an etiquette that
prevented self destructive behaviors from arising.
Such as SPAM and other nasty stuff. You could trust
who was online. Most people involved in the net were
smart enough to know that behavior that would hurt
others would come back to hurt them. They were also
a different group, mostly from an academic or
engineering background. They were highly motivated
to build the online world and make it a good and
useful place. There were not many ordinary people
who just used the online world to fulfil their
desires without being a stakeholder. Much like when
"civilization" came to the American west,
the new people brought with them the prejudices and
vices of the city. Most of all the early netizens
understood the frontier principle of reciprocity
that of "not letting your cow into my garden,
and my not letting my cow into your garden" to
put it politely.
About Me
I was born in the mid 1960s at the Columbia Hospital
for Women, in Georgetown, D.C., a wonderful
institution that in the year 2002 was threatened
with having to close its doors and did finally close
its doors forever shortly afterward. Georgetown is a
part of the District of Columbia, usually referred
to as Washington, D.C., but Georgetown is a
town within the district, just as the part
with all the monuments and the White House is the
Washington part. Confusing isn't it?
I was raised in Arlington, Virginia and have lived
here most of my adult life. I did live in Delaware
(much closer to the seashore!) for two years in the
mid 1980s. It was a pleasant place to live and I
enjoyed my stay (mmm, I can still taste eclairs
fresh Fleischman's bakery in Dover, bought by
the dozen box, made from Hartly eggs and Lewes
double cream).
Here you have a Bohemian looking self-portrait of
Steve Knoblock as the "photographist."
Made with an inexpensive Olympus D340R digital
camera, hand held exposure and a little manipulating
in Photoshop Elements.
The Rediscovery of My Virginia Roots
It was with some irony I discovered my roots right
here in Northern Virginia. My family moved here from
the mid-west just before Arlington came into
existence (it was part of Alexandria County then) in
the 1920s. However, while trying to discover the
identity of a relative depicted in an old carte de
visite (a type of photograph from the 1860s) I
stumbled across a surname unknown to me. It had been
staring me in the face from the signature line of
the carte but I could not make out the letters. By
investigating the photographer, my great great
granduncle, I learned the surname was Gunnell. I
began investigating this line of my ancestry, which
remained a bit of a mystery.
Wanting to know more, I went to the Arlington County
Public Library's Virginia Room to see if I could
find anything on this unusual surname. I discovered
that the Gunnell family settled in Fairfax County in
the mid to late 1600s and were a "second
tier" family socially to the circle that
Washingtons and others revolved in. The Gunnells
owned more than 900 acres of land in Arlington and
Fairfax counties (wish the family had those lands
now! You can check out my site on Northern
Neck Land Grants) So here our family was
blithely living and shopping and scooting around on
our own ancestral lands without even being aware of
it.
All that's nice to know and surprising, but the
most important thing was discovering that I am
descended from a patriot who participated in the
Revolutionary War: Jonathan Gunnell. His story is
interesting from a social history perspective and
has not really been told. His life mirrors the
changes taking place as our country shed its
colonial identity and attempted to deal with the
meaning of liberty, the curse of slavery and
economic expansion.
Jonathan joined up when General Nathaniel Greene
came through Virginia on his way to the Carolinas to
fight "The War in the Southern Dept." as
it was called by "Lighthorse" Lee (Robert
E. Lee's father). Greene was met with
indifference in Virginia when he asked for men and
materials to bolster his army going south. Jonathan
Gunnell was one of the few who answered that call to
arms. Many people do not know that most of the
population during the revolution was either neutral
or opposed to the war with England. It was an act of
faith that people like Jonathan joined in the
revolution and the making of a new nation founded on
principles of liberty. He didn't know if he
would be victorious and he didn't necessarily
have the support of all the people as in other U.S.
wars. Yet he persevered.
Jonathan served in one of the U.S. Dragoons on Light
Horse, part of the cavalry formed by the elder Lee.
Lee said of the young men raised in Virginia's
horse country that there were no finer riders and
they were the equal or better of any English
cavalry, partly because boys were raised riding
horses. He was severely wounded at Cowpens
apparently by a sword blow striking down his head,
arm and hand. Despite this injury he completed his
full term of service, fighting in many other
battles, at times alongside the unit commanded by
Lee and other units (his was commanded by William
Washington).
It was an important moment in my life to discover I
was descended from a participant in the
revolutionary war who had an exemplary war record.
It was important to feel connected to a place that I
felt completely disconnected from in many ways.
Moreover, I discovered a model of courage and
someone willing do the right thing before others are
willing to do it. Jonathan likely came from a slave
holding family, certainly the Gunnells in Virginia
owned slaves, yet he moved to an area of
Pennsylvania known as a conduit for slaves heading
north to Canada and rife with abolition activity, a
place very unfamiliar to a man who grew up in the
very English counties of Northern Virginia. He left
behind his extended family and any land and slave
holdings he may have been entitled to. His line was
one of the few (perhaps the only one) that made this
radical break with their ancestry. He did not
inherit any of the Gunnell property, land or slaves.
He chose to live in a society where his neighbors
were mostly German immigrants as can be seen in the
witnesses to his legal papers; his daughter married
a Swiss or German man. An Englishman from the most
English part of the colonies lived in a world
unknown to others, of Christmas trees, German
newspapers and many accents as waves of immigration
passed through Pennsylvania. The dissolution of the
Anglican Church meant he was forced to choose a new
religion. He chose a very strict Baptist church, the
Sewickly where he is buried today in Westmoreland
County, Penn.
Learning about my ancestry took a great burden off
from my mind. Although I grew up in Virginia, I
never felt connected to it. My grandmother's
family, the Barnum family, was a socially liberal
and progressive one, having its start in New England
prior to the War of 1812 and migrating west as
opportunity expanded along with the United States.
They were part of Cleveland's early days and
followed the railroad construction south into
southern Illinois. They joined the Union Army for
the Civil War. My grandmother's dream of being
an architect was frustrated and she became a young
women as women gained the vote.
Like many who would eventually come to live in
Northern Virginia, my family was a fish out of
water. It is not surprising that I felt this way, in
this seemingly northernmost of southern cities. I
was a little unsure I wanted to find roots here in
Virginia. Redneck's and slavery were not exactly
the stuff of which our family wanted in a
background. The cause of the American Revolution
became very important to me as I went through
elementary school. I identified strongly with it,
and saw it as a continuing, living revolution. I
felt left out that I had no roots here and that I
had no connection to the revolution that I loved.
Discovering that I was descended from a participant
in the revolutionary war was more than I could have
asked for, more than I could have dreamed, important
to my sense of identity. This is what family history
means to me.
Computers
My interest in computers started early. When I was
six years old my brother brought home some IBM punch
cards, which he gave to me to play with. I loved
those punch cards with their mysterious holes. I
tried to figure them out, but did not get very far.
I kept them for many years. I had a keen interest in
the moon missions. I sat on the floor next to my
miniature Cape Canaveral with talking mission
control headphones, glued to the television every
night on the way to the moon, anxiously waiting for
the Apollo capsule to reach its destination, hanging
onto every word of the news commentary. When the
moment came, I sat transfixed in front of the color
television watching that fuzzy monochromatic image
of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, on live
television.
I developed an interest in science through this
interest as well as an interest in science fiction
from all the toys I had (Maj. Matt Mason, etc.)
Eventually the calculating machines that could fit
in your hand predicted by science fiction became a
reality. I desperately wanted a pocket calculator
back when they cost hundreds, finally getting a
Commodore from Sears for about $10 when the price
finally dropped. I wanted a LED watch. In my teenage
years, true to my geek nature, I lusted after the
MITS Altair advertised in the back pages of
Scientific American but was more than I could ever
afford being just a kid.
I started programming in BASIC when my brother got a
TRS-80 LI 4K (Yes, that is FOUR Kilobytes of RAM!).
I finally got my first computer when a teenager by
saving up for and purchasing a TRS-80 16K Level II
Basic system. Programming BASIC and assembly
language (on the Microsoft Editor Assembler---I knew
they were going on to great things because their
software came in shrink wrapped boxes instead of the
little stoner-inspired zip-loc baggies the rest of
it came in) I learned everything you ever needed to
know about programming on that machine by making
games in BASIC and "music" programs in
assembly language. (love the Z80! That LDIR really
moved the bytes!). I added extensions to BASIC and
created drivers for music out the cassette deck, I
even tried doing digital image processing, but that
was not a success on a 128 pixel wide display
without a scanner or any way to get a digitized
image into the thing. Those with Apples had an
easier time with graphics, but they were
unaffordable at the time (about $1200 base price).
That's enough for now.
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