Arnold and Leda Sturtevant reside in Fayette Maine, where they operate a country inn, home to nine generations of Sturtevants. Arnold is author and illustrator of a number of histories and commentaries,; he is founding president and past chairman of Washburn/Norlands Living History Museum, and past chairman of the Maine State Museum Commission. The Sturtevants’ country vacation rentals and bookstore Web site can be visited at www.homenestfarm.com.
Maine authors, Arnold and Leda Sturtevant, have written a new book, Footprints of Patriots, in conjunction with their rural Church’s 225th anniversary year of 2017. This is the 5th and final volume of their series entitled, Home-Nest Chronicles, the story of one Maine family’s life over 9 generations that have called “home” the tiny community of Fayette Corner, Maine.
In this latest volume, the focus is on Home-Nest Farm’s church family and its meeting house built by Revolutionary War patriot Andrew Sturtevant’s son, Andrew Jr., on land deeded from the Farm. The family has had a continuous relationship with the church since its beginning; and its collection of personal letters, journals, photographs and poetry, when coupled with copious preserved church records weave together a fascinating story.
The elderly authors’ personal journals, diaries, photo record and commentary cover a large portion of the church’s history in an informative and entertaining fashion. Especially unique are biographical accounts of various family members and friends living their faith over the centuries in a world increasingly hostile to the very Christianity that so successfully conceived and guided America from tyranny into unexcelled freedom. The authors’ observations regarding lessons to be learned from these well documented experiences amount to especially useful social commentary.
The book’s appended statistics and graphs relate spikes in church spirituality (as measured by periodic numbers of baptisms) to population, and synergistic spiritual, socio-economic, and natural events: very effectively demonstrating how “all things work together” for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. It isn’t just good preaching that matters … (as important as that is); fear, shifting demographics, depression, natural disasters, wars and terrorism all play a prominent part.
In one chapter, the authors convincingly warn how religious freedom is today greatly endangered by opening our borders to Islam: how cultural diversity militates against our nation’s historic preference for peaceful assimilation; and how political correctness and anti-Christian accommodation of Islam’s Sharia law are wholly incompatible with Constitution, resulting in lost protection of citizens, unequal administration of justice, and lost freedom of religion … creating sanctioned enclaves of seditionists whose goal is political/religious dominance by force.