Alexander Santiago

HIS20 Honors

Podcast Script: Final

            Hello! And welcome to Alex’s incredibly awesome podcast. The topic of today’s podcast is no other than the great Thomas Paine, but more specifically, his last home, which is located right here in New York.  For those of you who have been living under a rock, I see no other explanation, and don’t know who Thomas Paine was, than today’s your lucky day.  Mr. Paine was born on January 29, 1737 in the great country of England. Son of a corset maker, Thomas was a bit of a failure in his early years. He failed out of school when he was 12, and sucked at making corsets. He dabbled in different jobs till he landed the job of tax officer in 1768, which put him on the road to pamphlet making greatness!

          Benjamin Franklin met Thomas Paine while in England in 1774, and I guess you can say they “hit it off”, because with his help, on that very same year, Pained reached the Americas. Paine arrived to the colonies during a time where the colonists were still undecided about going to war with England.  This is the time when “Common Sense” is published; making Paine the household name he is today. Common Sense was so important because it put most colonists on the same page. That page was revolution. In Common Sense, Paine answered any concerns the colonists might have had about going to war. He blew always any delusion they might have had.  His other work include “The Crisis,” “The Rights of Men,” and, my personal favorite, “The Age of Reason”. Paine was imprisoned and almost killed for some of his work. And so we’ve reached the fun part, after the revolutionary war Paine left the country he helped make and returned to England, later moving to France.  Paine was not the most popular guy around, who would be if you were as outspoken as him, but if he had any fans left, he lost them with the publication of “The Age of Reason.” To show you why this work brought him so much hate I’ll tell you my favorite quote from it:

             The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

             Even today, saying something like that, depending on where you live, might get you some really dirty looks or, in the more extreme places, get you killed. In 1802, at President Jefferson's invitation, in his last couple of years he came back to America, where he was not greeted as the hero he was. Instead he was isolated for his view. And so finally we get to his last home.

            The Cottage on a Hillside they called it. It was originally located on what today we call Paine Ave in New Rochelle, New York. It was built on land, given to Thomas Paine, by the state of New York for all the awesome work he did during the revolutionary war. After his death, the cottage was bought and sold by on and off, till its last owner, Charles W. See, donated the house instead of demolishing it, to the Huguenot Historical Association of New Rochelle, after a lot of convincing by the association that the Cottage was worth saving. The Huguenot Association, or the Hugs Association as I called them, bought some of the land that was part of Thomas Paine’s farm, and moved the house there because it was due to be demolished for other construction work. It was either get a new location or to demolish it, and so it was moved to its new location where it still stands today. It was renovated and painted and opened as a Museum to the public on July 04, 1910.

            The place is open every day, except for Mondays, from 10AM to 5PM. Depending on what day you go, the place may be close to empty. I went on a weekday with my brother, and we were the only dudes there. So, if you like a nice historical site to visit, where you can take your time to walk around, this is your spot. The place is not much to look at. Several rooms are set up to reflect what life was like during the Revolutionary War and late 18th Century using original artifacts and some copies. According to the guide, the cottage is used to display artifacts and arts reflecting local history during the Civil War, the Black Experience, and W omen in History. It’s a really old house, what more can one say about it? But it was the house of a great man, and if you’re like me, who likes to visit old places, then we some good weather, one can have a good day here. Oh, and it’s not very hard to get there from the Bronx, or anywhere. Just take the Metro-North to the New Rochelle stop and take a bus or a cab. The people of New Rochelle are proud of having this historic site, so if you get lost like I did, asking for help would be a good idea, almost everyone I asked knew where it was.