I stopped in Saturday at the museum to drop off a few things. Jan Phaneuf was hosting. Two family groups came up to visit while I was there, but she’d had a long visit from a man whose relative had been billeted (provided nonmilitary housing) in Hatfield during the early 1700s, and he was wondering where. His descendant had been described as a “winter soldier,” and we wondered what that meant. Did it have anything to do with being a farmer, perhaps, and volunteering to soldier when not in the growing season – some type of Armed Forces Reserve?
After a brief online search, it seemed more likely to reference a term that grew out of a Thomas Paine essay titled The Crisis first published as a pamphlet in December 1776. This is the essay that begins with the well-known line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” In the second winter of the war, the essay chastises soldiers and others who are faint of heart in pursuing their cause, and states:
After a brief online search, it seemed more likely to reference a term that grew out of a Thomas Paine essay titled The Crisis first published as a pamphlet in December 1776. This is the essay that begins with the well-known line, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” In the second winter of the war, the essay chastises soldiers and others who are faint of heart in pursuing their cause, and states:
Image from Lambertville Library “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us that, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
A “winter soldier,” in contrast, is one who will continue to fight for his or her cause when the going gets tough. Paine continues, “lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”
If this visitor’s descendant was a “winter soldier” of this type lodging in Hatfield, I, also, am curious to know where. You just never know down what road a trip to the museum will lead you.
A “winter soldier,” in contrast, is one who will continue to fight for his or her cause when the going gets tough. Paine continues, “lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”
If this visitor’s descendant was a “winter soldier” of this type lodging in Hatfield, I, also, am curious to know where. You just never know down what road a trip to the museum will lead you.
