Miguel Hernandez, the former mayor of Ossining, has been steamed at me ever since I wrote a column that was unsupportive of the idea of establishing a museum at Sing Sing Prison. It’s a classic federal “pork barrel” project.
Hernandez has most recently taken me to task for Tuesday’s column, which was probably the most benign, least controversial piece I’ve written all year. It was about the season of Thanksgiving and Veterans Day—and centered on a recent trip I made to Plymouth, Mass. where the Pilgrims landed. Go figure…we live in a nasty time when even the act of trying to say something nice gets slammed.
Hernandez decided to set me straight on “the facts” by writing a condescending letter to the editor, which I have provided here in full. From time to time, I feel compelled to publish some of letters I get, especially the dopier ones.
This qualifies as dopey for three reasons: 1) It completely (and perhaps deliberately) misses the point of the column. 2) It’s pompous and factually incorrect and 3) The guy spells my name wrong.

Anyway, here it is. My response follows.

THE HERNANDEZ LETTER

“Phil Riesman’s recent article about the founding and settlement of Plymouth, Massachusetts repeats some errors that he may have learned from the Plymouth, MA Tourist Board. First of all, the oldest street in North America in what is now the United States is in St. Augustine, Florida and not in Plymouth Massachusetts. St Augustine was founded on September 8 1565 by Don Pedro Menéndez near the sight of where Don Juan Ponce de León first landed in 1513. Thus St. Augustine trumps Plymouth by at least 55 years and is the oldest. continuously inhabited settlement in the United States. Second, the landing on Plymouth’s shores was on December 21 1620, not November 11 as Mr Riesman reports. Third, The so-called “Pilgrims” never went by, or otherwise called themselves by that name. They described themselves as “Puritans” and “Separatists” meaning that their ultra-orthodox protestant faith was pure and untainted and that they had separated themselves form the Church of England. Furthermore, they only religious freedom they cared about and believed in was their own and as such they were extremely intolerant and mistreated and forced out of their settlements Indians and Englishmen who did not adhere to their fundamentalist beliefs.

Also, the “first” Thanksgiving in North America did not take place in the Plymouth colony. In 1598 Don Juan de Oñate the son of a noble Spanish family led one of the first major colonization efforts into what is now the United States. Four hundred men, 130 with families, left Santa Barbara (in north-central Mexico) for New Spain in January of that year. Four months later, after plodding across the torturous Chihuahua desert, they arrived at the banks of the Rio Grande near present day El Paso. On April 30, at the the Feast of the Ascension, Don Juan claimed the land for King Phillip of Spain, hosted a thanksgiving meal for his colonists and the Indians who converted to the Catholic faith, and presented for the enjoyment of all, a play, written by Captain Marcos de Fárfan, This was the first thanksgiving service and the first dramatic presentation in America.

I suggest that a good place for Mr. Riesman to begin learning the true history of the “Pilgrims” and their colonization of North America is by reading, “Mayflower” by Nathan Philbrick. Also, David Weber’s “The Spanish Frontier in North America” will also help readers learn about Spanish contributions to the founding, settlement and creation of the United States.”

MY RESPONSE:
Phew Miguel, but that was long-winded. I’ll try to be as wordy.

First, I did read Philbrick’s book, “Mayflower,” and you might want to re-read it because the Pilgrims did, indeed, land on Nov. 11, on the tip of Cape Cod. It’s in all the Pilgrim histories, including “Saints and Strangers,” which I also recommend you read.

Second, I never said the Pilgrims called themselves “Pilgrims.” Also, I never said they were “tolerant.” In fact, I said quite the opposite.

Look, I always expect to hear from sticklers, but I do get frustrated when the sticklers get so carried away with the game of “Gotcha” that they start seeing cross-eyed and don’t read carefully. It’s embarassing.

Your other criticisms strike me as trivial, even disingenuous. For example, you know full well that the American Thanksgiving tradition is traced to the Pilgrims…Abraham Lincoln had more than a little something to do with this back in the grim days of the Civil War. In any case, the column wasn’t about the origins of the holiday, nor was it about any debate over historical claims…and you know that, too.

On the “first road” question, well, guess what? We’re both technically wrong. The Indians had paths before either of our ancestors came to the New World. The Boston Post Road, for example, was originally an Indian path. And oh yeah, did you know that the Indians didn’t call themselves “Indians?” Just checking.

One more thing—I still think the Sing Sing museum is a dumb idea.