FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH - THURSDAY'S THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY FOR ISAK POOLE

Today's profile for Black History Month takes us back to the American Revolution.....

From the IMDb:
Jeremy Larkin, Isak Poole, Henry Abington, and Elizabeth Coates were members of "the Yankee Doodle Society", a rebel group based in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1777. Reporting directly to General Lafayette, the team operated as spies behind British lines. Jeremy was the son of Chester's Tory Mayor, who hid his political ideas behind a façade of disinterested pacifism. Elizabeth was a liberated woman ahead of her time, and Isak was an ex-slave. The brains of the group was Henry, a big fan of Benjamin Franklin (whom he resembled), and always able to invent whatever device or scheme the group needed to finish their missions.
—Marg Baskin 

From Wikipedia;

'The Young Rebels' was the story of a group of youthful guerrillas fighting on the Patriot side in the American Revolutionary War. They were part of the fictional "Yankee Doodle Society", based in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1777. Their goal was to harass the British forces however they could and serve as spies for the rebels. The four main characters were Jeremy (Richard Ely), son of the mayor of Chester, Isak (Louis Gossett, Jr.), a former slave, Henry (Alex Henteloff), a bright young, bespectacled man who looked a lot (by design) like a younger Benjamin Franklin, whom he greatly admired, and Elizabeth (Hilary Thompson), Jeremy's even-younger girlfriend. Any parallel between this "youth movement" and the one going on in the United States in real life at the same time that this show was aired was completely intentional. Aiding these young American rebels in their cause was a young French rebel, the Marquis de Lafayette (Philippe Forquet), who had come to their aid not just because he believed in their cause but also to learn how to export many of its principles to his native France.

In that same time period, I do have a theory of relateeveety - Isak Poole could have been the nephew of a slave named Fiddler who belonged to the Reynolds family in Virginia.  Isak's mother could have been Fiddler's sister and was sold off to the Pooles.  (A descendant of that family was Edwin Poole, one of the founders of the law firm Crane, Poole, and Schmidt as seen in 'Boston Legal'.)

We have no clue what happened to Isak Poole even before the war ended, but I'm sure he met more historical televersions besides General Lafayette and Nathan Hale.  After the war, I believe he started a large family and - based on telegenetics - was the common ancestor for several citizens of Toobworld mostly seen during the latter half of the 20th Century.  Three of his grandsons could have been in the wild, wild West: the ill-fated bounty hunter Joe Sims, racist outlaw Buck Walter, and railroad worker Henry Hill who was experienced in carting explosives.

'Little House on the Prairie'"The Long Road Home"
Henry Hill 

'Alias Smith and Jones' 
"The Bounty Hunter"
Joe Sims

'Bonanza'
"The Desperado"
Buck Walter 

Another possibility for an identical descendant was found in the 1920s near Atlantic City:

'Boardwalk Empire' 
Oscar Boneau 

But for the most part, many of Isak Poole's descendants were probably to be found in the late 20th Century and the first two decades of the 21st Century.

'Gideon Oliver' 
Professor Gideon Oliver (who solved crimes while not teaching anthropology at Columbia University)

'The Rockford Files'
Marcus Aurelius 'Gabby' Hayes (a fast-talking private eye and con man)

'The Lazarus Syndrome'  
Dr. MacArthur St. Clair (Chief cardiologist at Webster Memorial Hospital)

'Hap and Leonard' 
Bacon

'The Good Fight' 
Carl Reddick

'The Partridge Family'
Sam Simon

'Psych' 
Lloyd Marr

'ER'
Leo Malcolm

'Ellen'
Sgt. Timko

'Touched by an Angel' 
Anderson Walker

'The Six Million Dollar Man' 
Clark Templeton O'Flaherty

'The Jeffersons' 
Wendell Brown

'Petrocelli' 
District Attorney Kurt Olson 

'McCloud'
Dewey Justin

But there was one resident of Earth Prime-Time who could not be related to Isak Poole.  And that's because he was not a native resident of Toobworld.

'The Powers of Matthew Star'  
Walt Shepherd 

Walt Shepherd's real name was D'Hai, originally from the planet Quadris in the Tau Ceti system.  He was on Earth as the mentor and guardian of exiled prince E'Hawke who tried to hide in plain sight as high school student Matthew Star.  I'm not certain if it was a coincidence that D'Hai resembled Isak Poole, or if he used that specific telegenetic template to look more like a native Tele-Terran.  (As stated in 'Star Trek', the Preservers seeded the basic DNA for the humanoid form throughout the galaxy which mutated and evolved into humans, Klingons, Cardassians, Betazoids, etc.  So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that the people of Quadris were all of humanoid origins.)

So here's to Isak Poole, the mostly forgotten, unsung hero of the American Revolution and perhaps the founder of a widespread black family dynasty in the United States.

BCnU!