A friend emailed me and suggested I check out Edward Eggleston's works. MA uses Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans, but she informed me about A History of the United States--which has a school version and home version. Finding information about this man was easy. He was a Methodist Minister writing in the mid- to late nineteenth century. His home on Lake George, NY has been preserved as a national landmark (now that's enduring!) Here's the Wikipedia link.
Many of his works, including the one in question, are digitized at Google Books and are available for download and, better still, searching. I entered the word "Catholic" and got about a half dozen hits, including, of course, the Maryland settlement. All references, though few, were well presented--I didn't even bat an eyelash, never mind cringe. He even has A First Book in American History for younger readers (ds#2 perhaps!) Searching the text turned up no Catholic hits, but that's because it focuses more on a famous people during famous events presented in chronological order. I'll be scheduling the reading for term 2 and 3 over advent, so I'll let you know next year how it's going!
Another interesting serendipity was that I was trying to find a biography of the author of the Landmark book, Story of the 13 Colonies. When I tried to expand the search by not entering in his last name (Alderman) I discovered that the British historian H. A Guerber (big in AO history) wrote a book of the same name. I found it on Google books and searched it--again, another fair treatment of Catholics, and available for download! I have in front of me a 1898 copy, apparently a first edition, of her hard-to-find book, "The Story of the English." (Another wonderful find at my favorite local used book store!) A replacement for Our Island Story, perhaps? Since I have not read her yet, I'll let you know how this goes as well. It, too, is available as a free download on Goggle books.
I am holding out much hope for these--praise God for friends' emails and supportive comments! |
