Encountering Moses Beach
I t’s entirely fitting that I would have first come across the name Moses Yale Beach in a copy of an old newspaper article. As I began to look into the life of this man, I would come to realize that it was also fitting that he’d only been mentioned as an aside — a point of interest within the main story. That is how Moses Beach and his legacy seem to have been treated over the last nearly two centuries ~ as more of a historical footnote than historic figure. And it’s a sturdy old Yankee name, “Moses Yale Beach”. Biblical, with notes of the Founders and New England farmland . The tones struck by the name are evocative of the times in which Beach lived his fascinating and nearly forgotten life ~ the early decades of the new United States of America. In our own tumultuous era, the name and those times may ring a more provocative bell; at least for some. In fact, even some of my own preconceptions would be contradicted by the record. Still, in terms of those “ Oh, right
