Being Bosch

As part of every Germans life they complete a project called their family German Bible. I do not know if this is completed in other cultures but it is apart of every German’s life. For me it was very important as my Father was adopted and we have no genealogical information about him except he was adopted from up state New York.

The German Family Bible is completed for very practical reasons one of which is not to marry back into the same family line.

But my Mother also lost her entire family at a very young age and didn’t know her Mother’s maiden name. To compound this problem my Mother was moved away from New York where her family had lived since the 1600(s) and brought down to a small town in Florida. So from the age 15 on my Mother had very little interaction with any of her living relatives. She quite literally was lost.

In the late 1990(s) before my Mother’s sister died she brought down a family heirloom. It was a German table cloth. It seemed to be quite ornamental and decorative. Upon further inspection we noticed that it was signed by Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley.

Now there had been this story passed down to my Mother through her Mother that we were the friends of the White House. That seemed kind of silly to me when I was a child since I have never been to Washington DC. My Dad was a politician and so we were patriotic but friends of the White House seemed a bit extreme and improbable.

I hate to hit my sister with a quip but the truth was she wanted the cloth and tried to bond with my Mother over it. Beyond posing for a picture in the local paper which I thought was dumb my sister abandoned the project. But my Mom who had lost her entire family really wanted to know about her history. Being the only person who had any language training at all in the family and I spent considerable time in Europe I was roped into the project. I am glad I was as it made my Mother very happy at the time and she is passed now.

This project was huge by anyone’s measure let alone for one person. It was written in 13 languages which posed a significant challenge because the languages had changed over the last 100 years. And some of the messages were clearly cryptic.

Chinese was the most challenging of all the languages in particular their pictograph system.

I am a Bosch which is interesting in of itself. The heirloom is a historical piece detailing the raise of the first all voluntary military of the USA, the Rough Riders, for which my family served. So I guess we were always destine to live in Florida.

My family had appointments with many presidents so the story about my family being friends of the presidents was true.

I found my Maternal Family line which was really important to my Mother and as she was dying of Cancer I would tell her life the stories of the people who signed the cloth and their history. For us they have become our family.

I have uncovered a great deal of unknown military history which I will share in time.

I also discovered my family has always been Republican which is not surprising at all and we believed in integration in the military in a time when other people did not. My family served with integrated troops but as Germans who lived in Brooklyn it is hard to imagine why my family wouldn’t have served with their neighbors.

I have spent over a decade working on this project without the benefit of funding or help. I would like to write a book about it and publish it because I believe the Rough Riders in their entirety should not be forgotten. But it also is New York history as well and my family history intertwined with American military history.

And then I would like to be credited with the find and to preserve this heirloom. It is safe now but I would like to find a museum which can preserve it and loan it to them. It is untainted American History which I would like to share with my fellow Americans. I believe we are stronger as a country when we embrace diversity..

It means to be ultimately concerned with all of America and therefore I am very rich with family even with the death of my Mother.

And while I am certain Hollywood and others would want to spin this one way or another the truth is I remember the greatness of this country and its people. My family heirloom is a constant reminder of that greatness each and everyday.

So if you don't believe in government, your neighbor or yourself. I have enough faith for all of us to know we have the ingenuity, creativity, compassion and greatness that makes this country the beacon of light to the entire world. We just need to summon what lies within us once again to persevere.

What will never be lost is my faith in my fellow Amerian.

As I am writing this I have discovered my Family were Freemasons. I am making preparations to meet with the Freemasons as I am typing this to you. I have no expectation and look forward to meeting all of them.

Anyone interested in joining a Freemasonry can by simply showing an interest to one of it's members. Atleast that is how it begins. It is really a wonderful organization but I do not expect people outisde of it to understand there is a lot of misconceptions about the Freemasons. I probably should have guessed they were Freemasons because the Bosch family in German were Freemasons. I don't know why I would have thought the Bosch Family in America would be different. It is a fraternal organization therefore I will only be a friend of the organization and not a member.

What is clear to me now is that this heirloom is a freemason artifact dating back to 1896.