27 March 2010

HERALDRY 2

If you're interested in seeing if there is a heraldic crest or shield for your surname, you may want to use books that describe these in the special language of heraldry. There used to be meaning in every color, every animal, every form of shield, and design.


25 March 2010

BOOK EXCERPT : MAYFLOWER by NATHANIEL PHILBRICK

MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Viking Press
C 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick

After the Mayflower journeyed to what would be New England, other ships made the journey, including the Fortune.

124) "There were a large number of Strangers among the passengers, many of them single men who undoubtedly looked with distress at the noticeable lack of young women among the Pilgrims. With the arrival of the Fortune, there would be a total of sixty-six men in the colony and just sixteen women. For every eligible female there were six eligible men. For young girls such as fifteen year old Elizabeth Tilley, nineteen year old Pricilla Mullins, and fourteen-year-old Mary Chilton (all of them orphans). The mounting pressure to marry must have been intense, especially since the new arrivals tended to be, in Bradford's words, "lusty young men, and many of them wild enough." Adding to the potential volatility of the mix was the fact that there was no place to put them all. Bradford had no choice but to divide them up among the preexisting seven houses and four public buildings, some of which must have become virtual male dormitories..."

Guess whose ancestors arrived on this voyage? Future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His ancestors name was Philip de la Noye, whose French surname was changed to Delano...

24 March 2010

SIBERIAN ANCESTOR NOT NEANDERTHAL or MODERN HUMAN MATCH !

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter – Wed Mar 24, 3:35 pm ET

"NEW YORK – In the latest use of DNA to investigate the story of humankind, scientists have decoded genetic material from an unidentified human ancestor that lived in Siberia and concluded it might be a new member of the human family tree....The DNA doesn't match modern humans or Neanderthals, two species that lived in that area around the same time — 30,000 to 50,000 years ago."

12 March 2010

BOOK REVIEW : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY on NATHANIEL PHILBRICK MAYFLOWER

MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Viking Press
C 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick

I love this writer's work. MAYFLOWER does not disappoint. This book will probably challenge the beliefs you've had aboout the Pilgrims since history was being taught in grade school.


The Pilgrims had been living in Holland and were concerned that their children were becoming too Dutch, rather than remaining English, so along with fleeing religious persecution they were making a second move for enthnocultural integrity. Even as the deals were made for transportation, non-believers were involved in the early colony. While about half of those who came to the eastern coast of what would be Massachusetts died the first year, they kept coming, and in about 50 years there were dozens of small settlements founded. Relationships with the Native Americans were never easy, because the neighboring tribes were interested in taking over each other's turf. Deals became rife with third party interests. And no the Pilgrims were not Pacifists.

If you can trace your ancestry to the Pilgrims you may find yourself related by marriage to a number of famous historical figures. Why?

Because (page 104), "A few weeks after Bradford's election to governor, Edward Winslow and Susanna White showed the rest of the settlement that it was indeed possible to start anew. Susanna had lost her husband, William, on February 21; Edward had lost his wife, Elizabeth, on March 24. Just a month and a half later, on May 12, Edward and Susanna became the first couple in Plymouth to marry. Six weeks may seem too short a time to grieve, but in the seventeenth century, it was quite normal for a widow or widower to remarry within three months of his or her spouse's death. Children needed to be cared for; households needed to be maintained. And besides, these were exceptional times. If all the deaths had failed to inure them to grief, it had certainly altered them to the wondrous necessity of life."

And guess what? They were married in a civil ceremony as, Bradford, who married them, cited that nowhere in the Gospel does is say that a minister should be involved in a wedding!

C Ancestry Worship Genealogy /Christine 2010 All Rights including International and Internet Rights reserved

09 March 2010

U.S. CITIZEN and IMMIGRATION Link here!

Here's a link to a United States government archive you'll find interesting... It's not a free service but let's face it. Government genealogists probably know just where to look saving you a lot of time and the fees are probably equal to a tank of gas to the closest do it yourself archive.

05 March 2010

BOOK EXCERPT: DANCING at CIRO's by SHEILA WELLER - on Los Angeles in the 1940's

I love to read around the people I'm researching, who become characters in the great play of life. Sometimes you read a book and it brings a place and time alive again too. This is a wonderful excerpt from a wonderful writer, Sheila Weller. Her mother's brother owned the famous Ciro's restaurant which was something of a home to the Rat Pack when they weren't in Vegas... Christine

Page 84 and 85

"There was still an unfinished quality to the place. The whole Los Angles basin, from San Bernadino to Santa Monica, had, two centuries earlier, been a swamp-pocked plain where antelope and wild cattle grazed on patchy grass amid alder, willow, and sycamore; where cacti, manzanita, and buckthorn spouted, giving the ground a scrubby aspect. Into this abyss, several leather-jacketed Spaniards - members of a company led by Captain Don Caspar de Portola (the Spanish Governor of the Californias) and a gray - robed Franciscan friar named Juan Crespi had stumbled in August 1769. They encountered stocky aboriginals who "began to howl like wolves as they drew near to us," their diary reads, but they eventually agreed to barter. They explored and christened their new friends the Gabrieleno Indians.

"Priests, soldiers, and colonists made their way up from Mexico over the next fifty years. The city passed from Spanish to Mexican rule in 1822, and the 1841 Pre-emption Act allowed settlers to homestead for $1.25 an acre. After a trio of events - the Gold Rush of 1848, the cession of California to the United States that same year, and statehood in 1850, Hollywood and West Los Angeles attracted migrants who, over the next thirty years, built citrus orchards on acreage that would later become Melrose, Fairfax, and Fountain Avenues and miles of Wilshire, Santa Monica, and Sunset Boulevards.

"Danish sailor Christian Duen homesteaded 160 acres that squared Santa Monica, Normandie, Melrose, and Western. Kentucky miner John Bower worked a plot between Franklin and Sunset. A 1870's roster of Hollywood fruit farmers includes "a German cripple, a French sailor, a Basque sheep raiser, a Mexican war veteran, a Prussian Calvary officer." Eventually this ragtag lot would disappear, to be replaced by a civic culture so bland, it would lead H.L. Mencken to dismiss L.A. as "Double Dubuque." Yet something of this haphazard diversity lingered, making for a class system that upturned eastern caste rules. The Irish, scorned in Boston, became L.A.'s elite; the Mulhollands and the Dohenys were the young city's Astors and Rockefellers. In Los Angeles, Jews didn't try to "pass." People WANTED to be Jews; many who weren't born Jews later converted.'"

C 2003 Sheila Weller St Martins Press

01 March 2010

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE MARCH 2010 HUMAN FAMILY EARILIEST ANCESTORS

Hominid fossils are rare indeed, but new finds and new scientific theories are suggesting that maybe that shared ancestry with the chimpanzee (96 % shared DNA) isn't about what chimps look like NOW! Fossil "Ardi" is suggesting by none evidence that she both walked upright and spent a lot of time hanging in trees... LINK NOW to the article, above!

CAN YOU BE A CREATIONIST and an EVOLUTIONIST ? - YES !