. Inventing Moses Beach .

                                        National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution                                       Artist:   Jeremiah Gurney, 12 Oct 1812 - 21 Apr 1895 c. 1855, New York City

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