Foulkes to share travel stories, books in library program

Professor Emeritus of English Robert Foulke and his co-author /wife Patricia will share details of their writing and traveling adventures in a presentation scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, at the Saratoga Springs Public Library.  Free and open to the public, the event will take place in the H. Dutcher Community Room.  The Foulkes will give a Powerpoint presentation with details of the trips they took to research their Visitor?s Guide series.  The books will be on sale as well.

Robert Foulke, a past chair of Skidmore?s Department of English, and Patricia Foulke have been traveling and writing together for the 55 years of their marriage and now enjoy bringing some of the history of America to life in a series of three heritage travel guides. These books appeal to history buffs, travelers as they plan a trip, and armchair travelers as well.

From the earliest exploration of the New World, through the Colonial era, the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and up through the War of 1812, the authors delve into the lives of the early settlers, their successors who lent their expertise to fashion a new political system and those who later fought and died to preserve their independence.

A wealth of historical detail is provided to establish context for the times, along with timelines, photographs, insightful descriptions of sites and museums, a few historic recipes, short bios on prominent historical figures and details on modern archeaological finds.

A Visitor?s Guide to the Colonial and Revolutionary South (2008) completes a heritage travel series that covers the origins of 21 states and Washington, D.C.  A Visitor?s Guide to Colonial and Revolutionary New England (2006) explores the rich history of a neighboring region, and A Visitor?s Guide to Colonial and Revolutionary Mid-Atlantic America (2007) includes the crucial Champlain-Hudson corridor in which we live.   

America was both enticing and forbidding for Europeans.  The newly discovered continent held out the promise of fresh land and opportunity for many oppressed peoples, yet at the same time lay across three thousand miles of turbulent ocean and remained an unknown wilderness.
 
English explorers like Bartholomew Gosnold and John Smith began to explore the Atlantic coast and establish colonies early in the seventeenth century, followed by others from Holland and Sweden. At the same time Spanish and French expeditions created colonies in Florida and along the Gulf coast.  By the time our ancestors sailed to Pennsylvania from Wales late in the century the flow of emigrants had become constant. Some of your ancestors, too, probably sailed from European ports  to the New World.

Early emigrants who chose to make a new life across the sea knew they would never be able to return to their ancestral homes. As they settled they often sought familiar topography and determined to work hard and survive in the wilderness. Their story is poignant, both full of hope for a better life and marked by sudden and unpredictable tragic events.

As colonies grew and prospered the urge for more land pushed settlers across the Appalachian mountains toward the Mississippi and eventually all the way to the Pacific Ocean after the Louisiana Purchase made that possible.  From the beginning, the European concept of land ownership created conflict with various Indian tribes, and the westward movement exacerbated those difficulties. At the same time European powers struggled for control of the new continent, producing a series of wars of increasing scope and intensity for more than a century.

The culmination of that struggle was the American Revolution and its aftermath, the War of 1812.  As the Revolution approached, the distinctive nature of each colony?religion, economic interests, ethnic origins of the population?became apparent as initial attempts at cooperation between colonies faltered.  Only after 1775 did leaders begin to find ways of bridging those fundamental differences, beginning a process that lasted through the war, the struggle to establish a workable constitution, and the turbulent early decades of the republic.
    
Moving back into these contexts and telling the story that never had certain outcomes is the purpose of our three-volume series on the colonial and Revolutionary eras, with a separate volume devoted to New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South. It is a heritage tourism series designed for both those who travel imaginatively at  home and those who take to the road to see places for themselves. The armchair traveler and the actual traveler can visit some of the sites that still retain physical evidence of the past. Please join us in a tour that will make you rethink and relive the experience of those who came to build a new world.