I'm writing this week's column on the Fourth of July sitting at a desk in my 18th century summer house in Lenox, Mass., which stood on a working farm for as far back as anyone can remember. That's probably why the house survived. Many of the early homes were torn town for the "great estates" that were built in Lenox by the "robber barons" in the late 19th century — they called Lenox the "inland Newport." These estates are quite a contrast to my relatively crude post and beam house — no nails, just irregular parts fitted together.

One of those great estates, Shadowbrook, built by railroad tycoon Anson Phelps Stokes in 1893, was a castle imported from Europe piece by piece and reconstructed on a hill with a commanding view of the Berkshires. It was called a "hundred-room cottage," although it was the largest residence in North America, overshadowing Elm Court, the 94-room Lenox home of Emily Vanderbilt Sloane. Shadowbrook eventually was sold to Andrew Carnegie, who died there in 1919. Another estate, just across the road from my farmhouse, is Robert Paterson's 1902 Blantyre Castle replete with feudal architectural touches of turrets and gargoyles.

Other great estates have competing grand features and regal names: Bellefontaine (a replica of the Petit Trianon of Louis XV in Versailles), Wheatleigh (Henry Cook's 1893 Florentine palazzo, a wedding gift to his daughter Georgia on marrying a Spanish count), the Mount (Edith Wharton's estate), Cranwell (the castle-like structure originally called Wyndhurst, built by John Sloane in 1894), and many others that totaled 75 great estates. The "grand" period that many think is the core history of Lenox actually lasted for about 50 years. With taxation and the Depression in the 1930s, that "gilded age" of Lenox came to an end. The estates were abandoned or turned into schools and religious institutions. Of the 15 that remain today, most are upscale resorts — like Bellefontaine, which is now Canyon Ranch. Stoke's "cottage" burned down in 1956 when it was a Jesuit retreat. Today the property is the Kripalu Yoga Center.

But my house, built in 1770, goes back to the authentic history of the Berkshires and the soul of America in the period of the Revolution. So it's natural for me to be thinking today about the American Revolution and how far we have come as a nation. This house is steeped in much of our early history. It was the original stagecoach stop in Lenox, and then a tavern during the American Revolution.

When my wife and I bought the house in 1983, we knew it was old. But the seller, Henry Sedgwick, said he thought it was built in the 1800s. That piqued my interest, even though for a boy originally from Brooklyn, 1800 was ancient enough. Much to my surprise, though, in searching the records in the county seat, I found the first deed transfer date was June 5, 1805, when Col. Elijah Northrup sold the house to Asher Sedgwick. Then it was passed down from Sedgwick to Sedgwick until Henry sold it to us.

Further sleuthing led me to a hand-written book — the "East Street Book" (subsequently published by the Lenox Historical Society) that chronicled the history of the farms and families of East Street - where all the early farms were located. Oliver Osborne, an elderly resident of East Street, penned the "East Street Book" in the 1880s. That's where I discovered that Elijah Northrup and his brother Samuel traveled by ox team to Lenox from Salisbury, Conn., in 1770 for a stake of farmland on East Street. Today it's a 40-minute drive to Salisbury, but at that time in history it was a rough journey over rugged terrain — there were no roads. Elijah and Samuel had to follow a path of marked trees. The area was still mostly Native American territory — the Stockbridge Indians were there first.

One incident reported in the "East Street Book" said that-Elijah Northrup killed a deer and laid it out on the floor just below where I'm sitting A Stockbridge Indian knocked at the door. He said he had been tracking that deer all day and claimed it. Northrup wisely gave it up.

Further rummaging through the stacks of the Lenox Library paid off when I stumbled onto "The Northrup Genealogy," written in 1908 by Judd Northrup, a historian and descendant of the Lenox Northrups. The book gave the entire genealogy of the family going back to Joseph Northrup who landed in the New World in 1637, just 17 years after the Mayflower drifted into Plymouth Rock. Joseph came from Yorkshire, England, on the ship of Hector and Martin. And, lo and behold, there in the genealogy was Elijah. To my amazement, I discovered that when he built the house on East Street in 1770, Elijah was a fourth-generation American, (To put that year in perspective, in 1770 Mozart was 14 years old.)

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Then the Revolution came and the Berkshires played a significant role. The Lenox Covenant of 1774, rejecting taxation without representation, was one of the first formal acts of defiance against the Crown, and a precursor of the Declaration of Independence. It was a courageous document. If England had won the war, all the signers surely would have been hanged.

The Berkshire residents under Col. John Patterson (later Gen. Paterson), who lived a mile down the road, had been preparing for war with his local militia of farmers and merchants. When news came that the first shots had been fired in Lexington, history books say that Paterson and his "troops" hastily journeyed from the extreme western side of Massachusetts to the extreme Eastern end with inhuman lightning speed, unfortunately not in time for Lexington. But the Berkshire regiment would go on to fight in many major campaigns. They crossed the Delaware with Gen. Washington and eventually returned to this area with the Continental Army to fight one of the most decisive battles.

The Continental Army assembled from all parts of the colonies and Canada on the eastern shore of Long Island Sound in 1777. They crossed the Sound and marched north to the region of Sheffield, Mass., just to the south of Lenox. They continued through Egremont and further west across the Hudson River to Albany, N.Y. Others joined them, and from there they headed north to Saratoga to face off with the king's army under the command of one of the most renowned British generals, John Burgoyne. The Continental Army won. On Oct. 17, 1777, the British army, facing annihilation, surrendered. It was a turning point that eventually led to total victory and the creation of a nation. Burgoyne returned to England in disgrace and retired. He could not recover from the shame of defeat and surrender to an unpaid, undisciplined, undertrained and underequipped ragtag army of mostly farmers. What he failed to note was that it was a determined army with a vision and a dream of democracy — also an army of immigrants and descendants of immigrants tenaciously seeking freedom and economic security.

So let's salute those farmers and other ordinary citizens who gave us this great nation and the democracy that shines as a beacon to the world. They passed on to us a mighty baton. Let's hope we can recapture the just and moral standard that they set and keep the light glowing.

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Bernard Starr, Ph.D., formerly professor of developmental and educational psychology at the City University of New York, now teaches psychology and leads the Spiritual Forum at Marymount Manhattan College. In addition to his work in radio, he is a longtime contributor of commentary and opinion articles to numerous major publications. He is also the main United Nations representative for the Institute of Global Education that founded the Mucherla Global School in Mucherla, India. His book "Escape Your Own Prison: Why We Need Spirituality and Psychology to be Truly Free" will be published by Rowman and Littlefield in October 2007. His email address is {email OmniCns@aol.com}OmniCns@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Bernard Starr.