Conquest of a Continent

About the Book

Have you ever wondered as you drove across this great country of ours, who were those guys who wrested this continent from primeval forests, the raging and untamed rivers, the desolate and seeming unconquerable deserts?  In short, a threatening, inhospitable and uncivilized land, unexplored, with untold terrors awaiting those foolish enough to take that next step into that vast wilderness.  Who were those courageous, fearless frontiersmen who never hesitated to take that next step.

This historical novel seamlessly follows a family, the Bantas, through twelve generations, nine of which lived their lives as frontiersmen on the edge of civilization on the North American continent.  It is based on historic facts and human figures which the author, through deductive analysis, brought to life.  Names, places and dates in this narrative are as historically accurate as the author’s knowledge and sources permit.  Most quotations other than those that are indented are imaginary.

From the progenitor of the Banta family name, Epke Jacobs, who arrived in Vlissingen, New Amsterdam, New Netherland, in 1659, through Theodore Parker Banta (T. P.) of the eighth generation on this continent, there was a constant movement by each following generation to the frontier´s edge.  They were always pushing the edge of the envelope in its odyssey of two?hundred and forty-one years across a new continent from Flushing on the Atlantic coast to the Imperial Valley fifty miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Part I of this book follows the first seven generations.  It begins telling Epke Jacobse’s story of his and his family’s migration in 1659 from Minertsga on the dike protected lowlands of the Rhine River’s delta in Friesland, the northern province of Holland, and continues with his arrival into the Dutch colony of New Netherland to operate an inn on Long Island.  It concludes with seventh generation Frederick Banta’s, migration to Hanging Grove Township near Rensellear, Indiana, where he bought land from the United States government and carved a farm from hillocks in its swampy land.  During these seven generations, each following generation reached out and settled the continents newest frontier.

T. P. of the eighth generation, along with his wife and sons were the last of these generations of frontiersmen.  His story, part II of this book, is the story of the conquering of the last frontier in the contiguous United States of America.  His frontier was the delta of the Colorado River, named the Colorado Desert - the most God-forsaken and dead world imaginable.  He and his wife Carrie, along with their three sons, were the fourth family to settle in the desert under its new name, the Imperial Valley.  Who, in their wildest dreams, could foresee that this desolation could be made to bloom through irrigation water from the Colorado River in an abundance of luxurious green which caused it to become the vegetable garden of the nation.

Starting one hundred and seventeen years before the American Revolution, this book tells a continuous story in human terms of the building of our great nation, the United States of America.  This historical novel takes you from the delta of the Europe’s great Rhine River, where dikes held back the North Sea from flooding the lands, to the delta of North America’s great Colorado River consisting of nothing but a sandy desert crossing the Gulf of California.  It does this by following one line of one family that never left the frontier for over 242 years.

About the Author

Born in 1923, the author was the first male in his family line since 1659 never to have lived on a North American Frontier. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Altadena, California, during the great depression, he completed high school just months after the Japanese bombed Pear Harbor. He enlisted as an aviation cadet and after receiving his wings, was assigned to the 91st Bomb Group of the mighty Eighth Air Force in England. As first pilot of a B-17 heavy bomber, he completed a tour of duty flying thirty-five combat missions. Following the war, he entered the University of Southern California and earned a Bachelor’s degree. While at the University, he met and married Yvonne Spalding. They have two children, Michelle and Ted. He spent his last twenty-two working years as chief executive officer of the California FAIR Plan, the residual market for hard to place fire insurance in California. Upon retirement, he choose as a hobby the research of the Banta family name and found that much of the ground work had already been done by others. He noticed that each new generation of his line of the family since 1659 had always moved to the farthest frontier on the North American continent and that their story when put in chronological order became a seamless story of the conquest of the North American continent. His historical novel tells the struggle of our frontiersmen in building the infrastructure of the great United States of America.