Neil Armstrong: American Pioneer

By Raymond C. Wilson

When Astronaut Neil Armstrong took the very first step onto the moon's surface in July 1969, it was the biggest television event of the 20th century. About 650 million earthlings tuned into this historic event. Fifty years later I learned that my wife and Neil Armstrong share a distant 5th great-grandfather (David Kennedy, Sr.) who immigrated to America from Ireland in 1726. This book highlights Armstrong's pioneering spirit that descends from his Scots-Irish roots and his Native American heritage that can be traced back to famous leaders of the Seneca Wolf Clan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raymond C. Wilson
• Release date: Oct 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215419229

Raymond C. Wilson

Raymond C. Wilson is a military historian, filmmaker, and amateur genealogist. During his military career as an enlisted soldier, warrant officer, and commissioned officer in the U.S. Army for twenty-one years, Wilson served in a number of interesting assignments both stateside and overseas. He had the honor of serving as Administrative Assistant to Brigadier General George S. Patton (son of famed WWII general) at the Armor School; Administrative Assistant to General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley at the Pentagon; and Military Assistant to the Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon. In 1984, Wilson was nominated by the U.S. Army Adjutant General Branch to serve as a White House Fellow in Washington, D.C. While on active duty, Wilson authored numerous Army regulations as well as articles for professional journals including 1775 (Adjutant General Corps Regimental Association magazine), Program Manager (Journal of the Defense Systems Management College), and Army Trainer magazine. He also wrote, directed, and produced three training films for Army-wide distribution. He is an associate member of the Military Writers Society of America. Following his retirement from the U.S. Army in 1992, Wilson made a career change to the education field. He served as Vice President of Admissions and Development at Florida Air Academy; Vice President of Admissions and Community Relations at Oak Ridge Military Academy; Adjunct Professor of Corresponding Studies at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College; and Senior Academic Advisor at Eastern Florida State College. While working at Florida Air Academy, Wilson wrote articles for several popular publications including the Vincent Curtis Educational Register and the South Florida Parenting Magazine. At Oak Ridge Military Academy, Wilson co-wrote and co-directed two teen reality shows that appeared on national television (Nickelodeon & ABC Family Channel). As an Adjunct Professor at U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Wilson taught effective communications and military history for eighteen years. At Eastern Florida State College, Wilson wrote, directed, and produced a documentary entitled "Wounded Warriors - Their Struggle for Independence" for the Chi Nu chapter of Phi Theta Kappa. Since retiring from Eastern Florida State College, Wilson has devoted countless hours working on book manuscripts.

Book preview

NEIL ARMSTRONG

AMERICAN PIONEER

Written by

RAYMOND C. WILSON

Author of:

All about Space Flight for Kids

Kennedy Family of Pennsylvania

Whether or Not it’s a Weather Balloon?

Space Pioneers: Animals that Paved the Way for Human Space Exploration

Neil Armstrong: American Pioneer

Published by Raymond C. Wilson at Smashwords

Copyright 2023 Raymond C. Wilson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own

copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Scots-Irish Roots

Neil Armstrong’s Childhood

College Life

Military Service

Test Pilot

NASA Astronaut

College Professor

Explorer

Death and Legacy

Afterword

Appendix A: Cornplanter

Appendix B: Guyasuta

Appendix C: Gaiyasotha

Appendix D: Handsome Lake

Appendix E: Red Jacket

Appendix F: Blacksnake

Bibliography

About Raymond C. Wilson

Introduction

An estimated 650 million people watched the Apollo 11 moon landing

About 3.5 billion people lived on Planet Earth in 1969, and a full sixth of them -- 650 million earthlings -- watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on television. The Apollo 11 crew (consisting of Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins) had lifted off on 16 July 1969 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where people camped out for days to get a good spot to watch the launch. It took four days to travel to the moon, and then on 20 July 1969, the lunar module touched down on the moon’s surface. Shortly before 11 p.m. on the East Coast of the United States, the first clear TV picture was received back on Earth. When Astronaut Neil Armstrong took the very first step onto the moon’s surface, it was the biggest television event of the 20th century.

Not every household had a television back then, so some viewers flocked to friends’ houses, airports, and appliance storefronts. Sears department stores welcomed watchers and tuned in all their television sets so people could view this historic moment in both black-and-white and color.

The astronauts doubled as photographers and cinematographers, to make sure all the millions of viewers were not disappointed: According to a log of events, Mission Control was asking the astronauts to adjust camera views and angles as they began exploring, gathering samples, setting up American flags, and documenting. Every move the astronauts made was transmitted to Mission Control in Houston, Texas and then broadcast to the world by the big three television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC).

CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite, anchoring the CBS network coverage of the Apollo 11 mission, was initially left speechless when the Eagle spacecraft landed on the lunar surface. Eventually he managed to exclaim, Man on the moon!...Oh, boy…Whew, boy! Later Cronkite recalled he had hoped to say something more profound but the words that came out were all I could utter.

Nevertheless, the overall quality and erudite tenor of Cronkite's round-the-clock coverage, as part of an energized and extremely dedicated media effort, had a lasting influence on public perceptions of the mission.

Cronkite, who through his news presenting had become known as the most trusted man in America, was on air for 27 of the 30 hours it took for the crew of Apollo 11 to complete their mission, garnering him the nickname old iron pants.

CBS, along with the country's two other networks, NBC and ABC, spent a combined $13-million on programming, close to what they'd spent the previous November covering returns for the 1968 presidential election.

The effects of these combined efforts on the 94% of TV-owning Americans who tuned in to watch the moon landing were palpable.

Without television, the moon landing would have been a merely impressive achievement - an expensive stunt, to the cynical, remarked the New Yorker's Joshua Rothman. Instead, seen live, unedited, and everywhere, it became a genuine experience of global intimacy.

My family was fortunate enough to be among those Americans who owned a television. I remember very clearly sitting in front of our television in rural Pennsylvania and watching Astronaut Neil Armstrong take one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Little did I know on 20 July 1969 that two years later I would be marrying Neil Armstrong’s cousin (Billie Jean Null) who had just graduated from high school one month prior to Armstrong’s space flight.

Actually, it wasn’t until 50 years after Neil Armstrong’s historic lunar landing that I learned my wife was this famous astronaut’s cousin. I uncovered this relationship while researching the Kennedy branch of my wife’s family tree in 2019. I lay out this relationship in the ‘Scot-Irish Roots’ chapter of my book. My wife and Neil Armstrong share a distant 5th great-grandfather (David Kennedy, Sr.) who immigrated to America from Ireland in 1726. My wife is a descendant of David Kennedy, Jr. (son of David Kennedy, Sr.) and Neil Armstrong is a descendant of Mary Kennedy (daughter of David Kennedy, Sr.). Mary Kennedy married John Armstrong (Neil’s 4th great-grandfather) in the late-1760s.

When I began investigating my wife’s family history, I discovered the union of David Kennedy, Sr. (Scots-Irish immigrant) with a Seneca Indian maiden in Pennsylvania in the early-1700s. Although this union of my wife’s 5th great-grandfather with a Native American maiden did not constitute intermarriage between racial groups that was against the ‘anti-miscegenation’ law in Pennsylvania, it still became a taboo subject among some family members.

Perhaps due to frequent violent clashes that occurred between the colonists and Native Americans in Pennsylvania during the 18th century, the peaceful marriage of David Kennedy, Sr. and the Seneca Indian maiden has been all but forgotten. In fact, their marriage document has been locked away in the archives of the Masonic Union Lodge in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania for many years. That’s unfortunate because these forgotten stories are the private stuff that makes America the ‘melting pot of the world’.

With this book, I reveal not only the Scots-Irish roots of Neil Armstrong but also his Native American heritage that can be traced back to famous leaders of the Seneca Wolf Clan including Gaiusuthia, Guyasuta, Gaiyasotha, Handsome Lake, Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Blacksnake.

Some of the Native American relatives of Neil Armstrong

When David Kennedy, Sr. (5th Great-Grandfather of Neil Armstrong) married the daughter of Seneca Chief Gaiusuthia in the early 1700s, he became the brother-in-law of Seneca Chief Guyasuta and Seneca Orator Gaiyasotha. Kennedy also became the uncle of Seneca Prophet Handsome Lake, Seneca Chief Cornplanter, Seneca Chief Red Jacket, and Seneca Chief Blacksnake (a.k.a. Governor Blacksnake). I go into greater detail about each of these Seneca leaders in Appendix A through Appendix F of this book.

Scots-Irish Roots

Most Scots-Irish immigrants hailed from Northern Ireland and were of Scottish descent

Lured to the New World by a promise of cheap land and a fresh start, Scots-Irish immigrants began arriving in droves starting in 1718. Mostly Presbyterians originally from Scotland, they had faced discrimination in Ireland along with skyrocketing rents. With the purpose of reviving their religious community abroad, the first group of 700 landed in Boston in 1718. By the decade’s end, 2,600 more had arrived in New England alone.

Here are the lyrics to a song entitled Shores of Amerikay which is about a man emigrating from Ireland to America. This song is both a meditation on this and a statement of purpose. The author of this traditional Irish folk song is anonymous.

Shores of Amerikay

I'm bidding farewell to the land of my youth

and the home I loved so well

and the mountains so grand in my own native land

I'm bidding them all farewell

with an aching heart I'll bid them adieu

for tomorrow I'll sail far away

O're the raging foam for to seek a home

on the Shores of Amerikay

It's not for the want of employment I'm goin'

it's not for the want of fame

that fortune bright might shine over me

and give me a glorious name

no it's not for the want of employment I'm going

o're the weary and stormy sea

but to seek a home for my own true love

on the Shores of Amerikay

And when I am bidding my last farewell

the tears like rain will blind

to think of my friends in my own native land

and the home I'm leaving behind

But if I should die on a foreign land

and be buried so far, far away

no fond mother's tears will be shed o're my grave

on the Shores of Amerikay

Others sailed to the mid-Atlantic, landing in Virginia and spreading out across the Carolinas. Though some entered their new life as indentured servants, the majority of Scots-Irish were farmers who settled with their families in tight-knit communities along the western frontiers. Though life was more challenging than many had expected -- Native American attacks and extreme weather characterized the daily grind -- they continued to immigrate. On the eve of the American Revolution in 1775, more than 250,000 Scots-Irish called the New World home.

William Penn envisioned Pennsylvania as a Holy Experiment.

The Mid-Atlantic, particularly Pennsylvania, was one of the first American homes of the Scots-Irish, serving as the cradle for their culture. Pennsylvania had much to offer them. Because of the value proprietor William Penn had placed on religious tolerance in planning his colony, Pennsylvania had a pluralistic society where these Scots-Irish Presbyterians would no longer be stigmatized as dissenters.

The younger William Penn spent a substantial portion of his youth in Ireland. At the age of 23, he was living in Cork when, having pondered his family’s role in the violent colonization of Ireland, he converted to the pacifist religion of the Quakers. His father (Admiral William Penn) was appalled, but Penn went on to spread the Quaker message from London to Dublin to the American colonies.

Penn’s early missionary work took him to a settlement known as West Jersey in which he (along with 17 Irishmen) was a shareholder. Thus, Penn ensured that the future city of Philadelphia – and state of Pennsylvania – had strong Irish roots.

William Penn envisioned the state of Pennsylvania as a Holy Experiment. Penn’s Quakers were persecuted in England (though not Ireland) so the colony’s founders made efforts to reach out to minorities, including non-English immigrants, Catholics and even Native Americans. Though its founders were heavily Quaker, Irish immigration to Pennsylvania during the 1700s was largely Presbyterian and Scots-Irish. Roughly half of all Irish immigrants settled in and around Philadelphia, while the other half went further west to rural areas.

Pennsylvania’s economy, anchored by the rapidly expanding port city of Philadelphia, was also growing rapidly. An expanding flaxseed trade with Ireland during the eighteenth century, one closely tied to the immigrant trade, offered immigrant Scots -Irish merchants abundant commercial opportunities in Philadelphia and encouraged farm families to continue the linen production they had done in Ireland in America. The growing colony and its practice of purchasing lands from Indians also offered newcomers abundant rural lands and a generally peaceful climate in which to settle. Finally, with Philadelphia as the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in America, the Delaware Valley also offered Scots-Irish Presbyterians the promise of a spiritual home.

Popular histories of Pennsylvania’s Scots-Irish associate them mostly with the expansion of the colonial frontier, where, as prototypical American backwoodsmen, they built log cabins, farmed and traded, wove flax into linen, distilled whiskey, and fought Native Americans.

Paxton Boys’ massacre in 1763

Because of their participation in the notorious Paxton Boys’ massacre of the Christianized Conestoga Indians at Lancaster (1763) and their eagerness to fight brutally against Native American, French, and British enemies during first the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and then the American Revolution (1776–83), scholars have often portrayed them as violent Indian-haters and frontier ruffians. Their violent resistance against the whiskey tax during the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) and their especially vicious destruction of Philadelphia’s Catholic Irish immigrant neighborhoods during the city’s Bible riots (1844) not only confirmed their reputed predilection for violence, but ensured that historians would regard them as racists and nativists, too.

Yet these stereotyped and negative images are only partly correct. In actuality, Pennsylvania’s Scots-Irish were a socioeconomically diverse immigrant group from a variety of class, occupational, and educational backgrounds. While many did settle on the Pennsylvania frontier, many others did not; not all Scots-Irish were country bumpkins and gun-toting ruffians. Many Scots-Irish individuals and families, who ranged in status from impoverished indentured servants, to middling shopkeepers and traders, to wealthy Atlantic World merchants and professional men, made their homes in urban Philadelphia and its hinterlands and in other, smaller interior Pennsylvania towns such as Carlisle, Easton, Bedford, and Pittsburgh. They did not farm, but traded, retailed goods or services, practiced professions or trades, or labored as servants. And while some did live in log cabins, many others resided in stylish stone and brick homes where they enjoyed the kind of cosmopolitan lifestyle that other elite