23 December 2009
09 December 2009
MARILYN MONROE FBI FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT - USES
Right or wrong, the FBI files that you can obtain through the Freedom of Information Act can be very valuable to creating a family history or a biography.
IF THE PERSON WAS IN THE MILITARY but their MILITARY RECORDS "BURNED UP IN A FIRE" try an FBI file instead.
07 December 2009
THE MANY LIVES OF MARILYN MONROE by SARAH CHURCHWELL
The mystery of who Marilyn really was and what her life - and death - were really like continues to intrigue many years past her death in 1962. Perhaps we are all projecting upon her and maybe she was the one who started telling stories on herself that were exaggerations or blatantly untrue as groomed by Hollywood and to enhance publicity.
What I as a genealogist want to look at here is how well the author(s) used resources that we would use as well to bring any ancestor back to life. In this book we see a copy of her birth certificate (and the uncertainty of her patriarchal lineage is sorted through). We also learn that someone unearthened her admission to the orphanage on September 13, 1935. (Just how many foster homes did she have?) Needless to say, a good researcher would find evidence of any and all rumored and known marriages. (As for Marilyn's medical records, I've learned that her shrink unethnically recorded her therapy, but that's another book.)
Then, to fight the rumors - or perhaps studio smearing - that Monroe was unable to act in the end, an addled mess, we find that the archives of Fox Studio, which shows that she had just negotiated the most lucrative contracts of her life for future films and that she was actually very in control of herself on the sets. THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Last but not least, Marilyn Monroe's FBI file was used for research... and we are linking to that here.
The book was published by Metropolitan Books - a Henry Holt Company - New York and is C 2004 by Sarah Churchwell
06 December 2009
ELLIS ISLAND - IF YOU HAD A BETTER TICKET YOU GOT OFF AT CASTLE ROCK
Not only that, but there were some people who were already using the steamships to go back and forth to Europe for business, and that includes women, before there was any better way to travel.
The average time across from Europe to America over the Atlantic on a steamship was 10 days.
04 December 2009
AMERICAN HOLIDAY SEASON IS UPON US
For some this means a round of parties, seeing family, or maybe just noshing on ten pounds watching television specials. Holidays are distraction or a reward for working hard. Winter time, when the agricultural harvest was complete and the weather outside too cold to bear for long meant borrowing in.
I don't know about you, but I like to get into my cave. I bring out the crochet hooks and yarn about this time of year. I like making soup or stew in the crock pot, and coming home to the smell of that slow cooking.
The holiday season can be time to catch up on research, organizing your notes, or up or down loading.
29 November 2009
HIS BIOLOGICAL FATHER IS CHARLIE MANSON
I'm posting this, not for the lurid aspect of this breaking news, but because adopted as children, many people feel it is important to find their real parents. It varies from state to state and the laws and contracts at the time of adoption, but through adoption registry sites, at the age of 18 a child can post seeking a parent.
This has to be one of the more rewarding areas of genealogical research for me, but at this point this is my advice to Matthew Roberts. Even when all paperwork and looks are persuasive, get a DNA test that confirms the match!
18 November 2009
CZAR PETER
Many towns that were under occupation have changed names several times. For instance, some places in Central and Eastern Europe have names in German, Polish, Russian, and local languages. Likewise, the records you are seeking may be moved from one archive to another. In some European countries, records were kept by the Catholic church for many villages, because the priest may have been the only person who could read and write - and your ancestor need not have been a Catholic to be recorded.
In the United States large counties were split into smaller ones as populations increased. Don't get "county bound" and research paths of migration.
13 November 2009
THE PEERAGE ! WOW !
05 November 2009
Look4Cash.com
31 October 2009
RAYMOND MOODY and REUNIONS Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones
REUNIONS is a good book about an ancient art updated; MIRROR GAZING. This is a means to revisit with passed on loved ones, through visions. It's something the Greeks once did, maybe the Egyptians too, and there's a way to build a little room with a mirror in it to get the same effect.
On page 100 they write: "Like the ancient Greeks, I had designed a psychomanteum, to which people would come to consult with the spirits of the deceased. It was clear that given the proper preparation, people could see apparitions of departed loved ones using these techniques.
I found this to be an exciting and useful notion. People who are saddened by the loss of a loved one could handle their grief in a more direct way. Instead of telling a therapist how they feel about losing a spouse or child, they could talk to the loved one directly.
Through my work in near-death studies I know that seeing departed loved ones is tremendously therapeutic. Encountering dead relatives is one element of the near-death experience that keeps it from being a frightening or traumatic event. Research has shown that near death experiences transform people's lives by making them less fearful of death. One reason they become less fearful is that they see that dead relatives are happy in the afterlife.
LINK TO RAYMOND MOODY BY CLICKING ON THE TITLE ABOVE.
A 57 minute Google Video is linked to the right!
30 October 2009
ALL SOULS... HALLOWEEN... THE ANCESTORS
27 October 2009
From CHILDREN's PAST LIVES by CAROL BOWMAN on NIGHTMARES
Some Children have NIGHT TERRORS... a series of sleep disturbance that is not in the same category as regular nightmares. "In a typical night terror episode, the child screams, thrashes about, and may even walk or run around and get violent, all while appearing to be awake. But afterwards, unlike a nightmare, the child has absolutely no memory of the incident and no dream story that might explain the bizarre behavior. This alone makes night terrors extremely difficult to treat. Scientists have no satisfactory explanation for what causes night terrors and no reliable remedy. But they do know that they occur during the deepest sleep cycle, and that they commonly begin between the ages of three and four, and fade by thee ages of five or six.
Since we know know that some nightmares have a past life cause, it makes sense that some night terrors would too. Perhaps during deepest sleep,k a state furthest from waking consciousness, these children are being terrorized by vivid memories of a past life trauma. I think it's significant that night terrors occur at the same ages when children are most likely to have spontaneous past life memories......
25 October 2009
23 October 2009
VIDEO RECOMMENDATION : HALLOWED GROUNDS
HALLOWED GROUNDS
America's Overseas Military Cemeteries
Robert Urth Director
Glenn Marcus and Robert Urth Writers
You may have seen the genealogy databases, microfilms, or books, titled something like "Veterans Interred Overseas."
This is the video to watch if you want to know more about how 125,000 American military men and women - including the famous General George Patton, band leaders, and nurses, ended up in cemeteries in Europe and the Philippines. Now the cemeteries are beautiful, and places where the living can show their respects. And indeed many Americans are still making a stop at an American cemetery in France, for instance, part of their vacation.
This video will bring a few tears to your eyes if you have an ounce of Patriotism. It will remind you, sadly, that wars have been fought in the past by Americans who were barely here; immigrants new to the country who had not yet their citizenship -and Japanese-Americans whose families were in concentration camps in California.
But like all good cemeteries, these are for the living to make peace.
12 October 2009
LOOKING FOR CARROLL BECKWITH by CAPTAIN ROBERT L. SNOW
Like many research quests that seem at first fruitless, after hundreds of hours of research, Carroll saw the painting he remembered in a gallery when he wasn't looking for it, after he has pretty much given up. His research lead him to the artist's diary and unpublished biography.
On page 79 we read, "At the end of the wall, an easel stood in the corner holding a portrait. I gave it a glance and started on past,. but then stopped abruptly, as if running into a glass wall. Whirling around, I started open mouthed at the portrait, reliving an experience I'd had once when I grabbed onto a live wire without knowing it, the current freezing me in my tracks as huge voltage surged up and down my arms and legs."
On page 89 we read, "My whole belief system was no longer just teetering. it was falling. Everything around me suddenly had such a surrealistic feeling to it that I could have been in a Kafka novel...."
The artist lived from 1852-1917. He was a contemporary of John Singer Sargent. The book contains images of the artist as well as examples of his art.
LOOKING FOR CARROLL BECKWITHThe True Story of a Detective's Search for His Past Life
C 1999 by the author
Daybreak Books
09 October 2009
From JOHN LENNON by PHILIP NORMAN - John a Reincarnation of Yoko's Great Grandfather?
The Life
By Philip Norman C 2008
Ecco an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
A couple years before John Lennon was shot and killed he went to Japan with his wife Yoko Ono Lennon and their son Sean.
page 762 of the hardback...
"A particular memory of the Japanese trip was to haunt Yoko in years to come. One day, leafing through a magazine, John happened on an old photograph of her maternal great-grandfather, Zenjiro Yasuda. Since the deal had always been that they talked only about his family, he knew nothing of the great Zenjiro, the Emperor's de facto banker, who enjoyed national fame at a pop-star level half a century before such things were dreamed of. Nor had Yoko herself ever put together the several ways in which Zenjiro's life paralleled John's - coming from the north of the country, being a musician and poet as well as a moneymaking phenomenon, having his portrait hung in homes and workplaces as an inspiration to others, always insisting on full partnership with his tiny but dynamic wife. Though Yoko did not learn this until much later, Zenjiro even had the same birthday as John. The only thing while, seemingly, marked him as from a different culture and more dangerous times was his fate at the hands of a young man professing to be his admirer.
"John was fascinated by Zenjiro's photograph, which - especially since his conversion to Japanese clothes and manners - seemed to bear a more than passing likeness to himself. "That's me in a former life," he told Yoko.
"Don't say that," she replied. "He was assassinated."
02 October 2009
QUEEN MARY CUNARD LINE
30 September 2009
GENEALOGY CANNOT BE COUNTED ON TO HEAL A FAMILY
I've had students who were so lucky to have united family that documents seemed to arrive in their mail every week. They were able to create warm and fuzzy memory books with ease - never mind actual research. But announcing that you have a genealogy project - for the benefit of every family member - does not seem to cause cooperation when you need it, and you may find that some of your family informants will fall from their pedestals when your research proves that they are full of stories that are not true.
Such was the case when one student heavily relied on her aunt, the matriarch of the family. This matriarch spoke with authority and claimed credit for naming her siblings (some who proved to have been born before she was). She had also faked wedding dates to cover unplanned pregnancies and claimed a first wife had died rather than that there was a divorce and the kidnapping of a child.
She could be credited for INVENTING family, perhaps where there was none...
24 September 2009
FORGOTTEN ELLIS ISLAND HOSPITAL
The link abve goes to a web site for the hospital....
It's being refurbished!
21 September 2009
READING THE CENSUS and CALCULATING FOR INFLATION
I found a calculator on line that I like called The Dollar Times Inflation Calculator. I learned that ONE DOLLAR in 1930 is equal to $12.22 today. That means that one of my relations house in Jersey would cost $165,000 today. Now is that $165,ooo in Los Angeles (good luck finding that shack!) or a great middle class home in, well, Jersey!
Try this calculator and see what you think! Click on the title above or on the link to the right!
18 September 2009
BLISS BROYARD ONE DROP
From Page 315 of her book about discovering her "one drop" of African Ancestry;
Bliss' father Anatole Broyard, a New York literary critic, who became quite successful in his career, died having just revealed that he was from New Orleans Creole ancestry. Her search for her father and her heritage took her to archives and into interviews with previously unmet family members...
"When you love a family member of close friend, people tell you, to console you, that your loved one will always live on in your memories. They act as if this process occurs involuntarily; a biological trick to offset your grief, just as the brain suppresses traumatic memories that are too difficult to handle. Your friends don't tell you to record everything that your remember about the dead person because you will indeed forget many things over time. Nor do they warn you that your memories will become irreversibly mortared into a monument of the "dearly departed" --- some myth that your fashion to help organize your recollections to better retrieved them. Nor are you told about the contaminating influence of other people's stories, which seem all the more vivid compared to the familiar old statue in the corner of your brain. And absolutely no one will suggest that you might begin to wonder how well you knew your family member or close friend in the first place, now that it's too late to learn anything more firsthand."
12 September 2009
Review of THE MONIED METROPOLIS by SVEN BECKERT
New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie 1850-1896
by Sven Beckert of Harvard University C 2001
Cambridge University Press
America as a "classless" society? Only perhaps, compared to the Old World. For by the mid 1800's class was very much forming in America, and the rich elite of New York set the tone for who was who, as the merchant class rose to meet the Old Families. Sexism? The role of women was to enhance their families lives, and create the refuge away from the business world, to create society and culture in their time.
(On page 39) "Beyond these distinct gender roles, merchants defined their shared world by the design of the family dwelling. Its layout served to create the illusion of a sphere removed from the harsh realities of the market - a world in which "gentlemen" could recover from the world of exchange. Thick carpets, heavy curtains, and ornate wallpaper insulated the abode from the outside world, offering a physical retreat from the noises, odors and visual blur of the metropolis. Portraits of living or deceased family members lined its walls, denoting continuity, tradition, and stability...."
(On page 40) ... 1855, the average upper class New York household (assessed to have more than $10,000 in wages paid), had only 2.3 servants. (Servants who appear on census records are usually LIVE IN servants by the way!)
The women were leading the way when it came to entertainments and charities. And raising their children to Upper Crust manners and norms.
(On page 154) "Nothing quite expressed the confidence of the city's merchants, industrialists, and bankers better than the blossoming of social life among the economic elite's wealthiest ranks after the Civil War. in a distinct departure from the antebellum years, social events of this select and powerful group became more elaborate and more public than ever before. The social season following the war - one historian has estimated - saw 600 balls, and the amount spent on dresses and jewelry for these affairs ran to about $7 million."
This was the advent of the society column and reporters! Flaunting wealth became acceptable. Money started to speak up for those who earned it! And the broke aristocrats of the Old World were happy to trade titles for the income of a newly rich American bride or groom. And so came the day when the Churchill family of England demanded more of a dowry from the Jerome's of New York... Yes Winston Churchill's mother, Jenny, was an American (from prior reading I learned she was part Native American!)
If you love studies of the American Class System as I do, this book is a must read for you!
09 September 2009
02 September 2009
LA YOGA MAGAZINE DR CUMES' TIPS FOR DEVELOPING A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR ANCESTORS
24 August 2009
CASTLE
23 August 2009
REVIEW of ROYAL BABYLON by KARL SHAW
Yes, the author names names.
Yes, Princess Diana and the House of Windsor are mentioned. No, nothing about the situation in Monaco with Princess Caroline's incredibly wealthy German husband, who has been known to go berserk in rages, is here, but the author might want to do an update and include all that.
Here's what you need to buy the book besides the title and author above.
It's copyright by the author and published in 1999 by Broadway Books.
C Ancestry Worship Genealogy 2009 All Rights Including Internet and International Rights Reserved. Please contact us using comments if you wish to quote us.
20 August 2009
17 August 2009
1940 CENSUS coming up - WE CAN BARELY STAND TO WAIT!
Of course, if you're using the 1940 to find someone who is not showing up on CITY DIRECTORIES or the 1930 census, someone who has, perhaps, been the victim of terrible handwriting or inaccurate indexing or transcribing to databases, this can be frustrating.
My advice is NOT TO BE AFRAID OF DOING THINGS THE GOOD OLD FASHIONED WAY!
At least half of my personal genealogy has NOT been possible to replicate using Ancestry Databases, to give you an example. And believe me I tried.
When you pull something up instantly on a database it's a blessing, because it will save you time. However, don't get lazy looking for your family... Don't hesitate to call the closest archive, library, or museum to find out about any local publications such as newspapers, trade magazines, ethnic-oriented club literature, and historical books, to get a better position in your research!
15 August 2009
DISCOVERING YOUR CHILD's IMAGINARY PLAYMATE is an ANCESTOR
I think it's time to consider that children aren't just making up their playmates as they go. Rather, I think the child sees or remembers from his or her's time on The Other Side, another soul (maybe from a family or other "soul group") that is serving as a sort of guardian for him or her in youth.
13 August 2009
JACOBUS AWARD
10 August 2009
From JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MC CULLOUGH - ABIGAIL ADAMS on PARIS, FRANCE
She (Abigail) though Paris far from appealing, for all the splendor of its public buildings. And if she had not seen all of it, she had "smelt it." Given its state of sanitation, the stench was more than she could bear...... Everything looked filthy to her. Even the handsomest buildings were black with soot. The people themselves were the "dirtiest creatures" she had ever laid eyes on, and the number of prostitutes was appalling. That any nation would condone, let alone license, such traffic, she found vile, just as she fond abhorrent the French practice of arranged marriages among the rich and titled of society...
"What idea, my dear madame, can you form of the manners of a nation, one city of which furnishes ... 52,000 unmarried females so lost to a sense of honor and shame as publicly to enroll their names in a notary office for the most abandoned purposes and to commit iniquity with impunity," she wrote in outrage to Mercy Warren. "Thousands of these miserable wretches perish annually with disease and poverty, whilst the most sacred of institutions is prostituted to unite titles and estates." (Marriage)
On a visit later to a Paris orphanage run by Catholic Sisters of Charity, she was shown a large room with a hundred cribs and perhaps as many infants. it was a sign both pleasing and painful - pleasing because all was so admirably clean, and the nuns especially attentive and kind, but painful because of the numbers of abandoned babies, .... In an average year 6000 children were delivered to the orphanage, she was told ...'
C 2001 David Mc Cullough Simon and Schuster Publishers
06 August 2009
ALL OTHER NIGHTS a FICTION OF THE CIVIL WAR by DARA HORN
It seems just recently in American history and genealogy that we've come to understand that though a small number of persons of Jewish religion or descent came as colonialists, some of them rose to great heights, including Judah Benjamin, whose picture was on Confederate money because he was the Confederacy’s Secretary of State.
In this novel, the extremely talented writer, Dara Horn, made her day job as a researcher for a history magazine pay off, basing some of her characters on men and women who actually lived in those times. There's a love story running through it too, but I don't want to spoil it for you...
04 August 2009
THE PRESIDENTS OFFICIAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Though being born an American Citizen is a requirement to run for the Presidency, and some famous immigrants have wished to change this, BIRTH CERTIFICATES WERE NOT A REQUIREMENT IN ALL STATES OF THE UNITED STATES all at once or even all that long ago. Applicants for Social Security, who were born in other countries, often proved their age by the baptismals of their children, for instance. Our ancestors often kept their own accounting of their growing families by writing in the family's Holy Bible.
01 August 2009
REVIEW of OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS by PETER SILVER
How Indian War Transformed Early America
C 2008 Peter Silver
WW. Norton and Co Publishers
When is the last time you read about Colonialist's being scalped and terrorized by Native Americans as a form of terrorism, or suspicion of the new German-speaking immigrants, the Palatines, being thought of as crude by the Philadelphia establishment?
How about the dread of a Catholic-Indian conspiracy?
Peter Silver reintroduces these subjects without concern of how history collides with some present-day politically correct assumptions about imperialism. The Colonial world is rife with inter-tribal and inter-ethnic immigrant conflicts, some more visceral than others.
In the cities this is merely discomfort. In the wilderness - the frontier that is pushed west - the fear is palatable. Thus, the title, Our Savage Neighbors, is just right, for a book that might get booed at major American Universities where just the opposite stereotype of Native Americans is authorized.
Now that political correctness requires rewriting history, we Americans tend to think of all Native Americans as peaceful, spiritual (New Agey), and passive victims (with Casino Rights), maybe it's time to read OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS and learn again about the real terror of Indian War.Scalpings and the slaughter of innocents kept European cultured colonials used to different Rules of War, outraged and terrified, as if the MANSON FAMILY struck on a daily basis. (Some Indian tribes were known to enjoy cutting open pregnant women and ripping their babes out of the womb.) And so much for the prevailing notion that Indians didn't "own" land but shared it like a commune. They sure fought for their turf. And the gun proved to be the great equilizer.
Heavily referenced, this book's strength lies in its focus on the Early America of the Mid-Atlantic region and especially of Pennsylvania and the Ohio Territories, places where the English were followed by the Irish of Scotland (Scots Irish) and the German Palantines, who came into Philadelphia and moved - bit by bit - west, pushing the borders. An Indian raid that left mutilated bodies - scalped and limbs cut off - and farmers fled their homesteads, leaving crops to rot, for the relative safety of the cities, where they stayed for months. They were more afraid of the condition their bodies might be found in, of cut off limbs and rotting rather than being given a Christian burial, than death itself.
This book also illuminates the union of the French and the Indians against the British at Fort Pitt and surrounds, as well as the role of the Quakers and Moravians, who were not trusted for their friendliness to the Indians. It reveals the snobbery of those who arrived to the Colonies earlier, against the Scots-Irish and Palantine Germans, who waited in sordid conditions and disease hoping someone would buy their contract for servitude.
A truly exciting read!
Review C Ancestry Worship - Genealogy 2009 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International. If you wish to quote this review please contact us.
28 July 2009
DATING PHOTOS
DAGUERROTYPES - pioneer
AMBROTYPES - glass negatives - sharply etched appearance
TINTYPES - civil war
CARTE DE VISITES (CALLING CARDS) 1860-s' 1870's
25 July 2009
DVD RECOMMENDED HILLBILLY HISTORY CHANNEL BILLY RAY CYRUS
Watched HILLBILLY "the Real story" on the History Channel DVD, produced by Moore Huntley Productions, this weekend. Anyone interested in American History of the Appalachian region (the founding of the Wautauga Colony for instance), anyone with "Scotch-Irish" ancestry, anyone interested in moonshine making or marijuana growing, is going to find this one interesting.
Aimed at giving credit where it's due and erasing stereotypes where applicable, this one is definitely worth the time watching !
22 July 2009
21 July 2009
HISTORIC CHICAGO AFRICAN AMERICAN BONEYARD SCANDAL
"Officials estimate that at least 300 of 100,000 graves were tampered with at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Ill., which is the burial place several famous Americans including civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till. Four former workers are charged with dumping exhumed bodies in a deserted field the size of four square blocks in order to resell grave plots. Till's grave was not disturbed."
"Thousands of bones may be mixed together. Investigators say it may be impossible to sift through them to match them to specific people and return complete remains to a single grave."
- Rupa Shenoy, Associated Press
17 July 2009
Did You Know ? THERE ARE ABOUT 12000 NATIVE AMERICAN ANCESTORS
15 July 2009
NARA NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES
13 July 2009
POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN by DAN GORDON
Messages of Love from the Other side
C 2008 Dan Gordon
Freepress / Simon and Schuster
This short but eloquent book is about family who've died and the uncanny experiences that lead the author, Dan Gordon, to believe, that yes, they have let others know they are in heaven. From the appearance of a jackrabbit who uncharacteristically remained Buddha-like as a sign, or the way his son Zaki smelled sweet - and a grandparent thought of him in terms of dimming light - before a killing car accident just months out of film school, Dan Gordon presents those ah-ha moments.
Here is what The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles had to say : "Gordon hails from 13 generations of Chasidic rabbis, and while his immediate family has long shed strict, Chasidic Jewish tradition, the stories in his book illustrate, in secular terms but with the skill of a master Chasidic raconteur, the presence of God in everyday life. "The recirculation of the soul, kind of the belief in reincarnation, isn't foreign to Judaism at all or our literature," Gordon said. Orit Arfa writing.
Zaki had asthma. Page 85 "I had become aware of a sickly sweet odor that emanated from Zaki's scalp just before the onset of an asthma attack. I told his doctor this and it in fact never failed. From then on, the minute I smelled that smell on his hair, we started his medication as a prophylactic. Thus, when Debi said that he smelled like my deceased father, I immediately took a whiff. Maybe his asthma is about to come back, I thought, as if only asthma could do him harm. But the sickly sweet smell wasn't there.
"I don't smell anything," I said.
"Well I do!" Debi said defiantly. "I don't know how you can say you don't smell anything. He smells just like Uncle Abe!"
Debi seemed to be getting genuinely angry about the whole thing. I tried logic. "Debi, I said, "that's silly. I don't even remember what my father smelled like."
"We'll I do," she said, eyes flashing now in defense of the memory of my father's particular smell. "And he," she said, pointing at Zaki, "Smells just like him." ...
08 July 2009
GERMAN ANCESTRY? Could it be from the HESSIAN SOLDIERS WHO CAME TO THE US TO FIGHT ON THE SIDE OF BRITAIN ?
Published 2001
Copyright the author,
pages 139-140
"The ships flying the Union Jack that arrived off New York at the end of June 1776 - the fleet from Halifax that one eyewitness described as looking like "all London afloat" - had been only the start of an overwhelming show of British might come to settle the fate of the new United States of America.
By July 3rd, 9,000 troops led by General William Howe had landed on Staten Island, where hundreds of Tories were on hand to welcome them. Howe himself had gone ashore on July 2, the very day that Congress had voted for Independence, and in the days following, up the Narrows between Staten island and Long Island, came ever more British sails, including an armada of 130 warships and transports from England under command of the General's brother, Admiral Richard Lord Howe. By mid-August 32,000 fully equipped, highly trained, thoroughly professional British and German (Hessian) soldiers - more that the entire population of Philadelphia were ashore on Staten Island, supported by ten ships-of-the-line and twenty frigates, making in all the largest, most costly British overseas deployment ever until that time.
By contrast , the American army faltered in defense of New York, digging in on Manhattan and Long Island, was optimistically thought to number 20,000 troops. These nearly all poorly equipped amateurs led by Washington, who in his year as commander-in-chief had yet to fight a battle.......
07 July 2009
06 July 2009
SOLDIER - FASHION IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHYS
First, especially if the photo is a wedding photo, you can be more certain that the person is wearing their best clothing, or clothing purchased or sewn for the day. This is true for the wedding party too. Any photo that appears to have been worn for a religious ceremony may be assumed to be the person's newest or best.
Secondly, examine any jewelry worn. Does it appear to be expensive? Metal and jeweled costume jewelry was not easy to come by until the Industrial age. What about hair ornaments or combs.
Third, look at hair... is it done in an elaborate style that might have required a hairdresser or maid to assist? Does the person appear to be well groomed? Is their hairstyle home-made ? (The bowl haircut on children)
Fourth, is the person wearing a uniform? If so does the uniform identify the country or side or a battle they may have been on? Are they posed in an official way?
04 July 2009
Did You Know THOMAS JEFFERSON and JOHN ADAMS BOTH DIED ON JULY 4th 1826 ?!?
These kinds of things make me think that so much is fate.
It's a great book and I highly recommend it to you!
02 July 2009
27 June 2009
From CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES by CAROL BOWMAN - CHILDREN WHO SPEAK FOREIGN LANGUAGES FROM ANOTHER LIFE
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book
page 184
"Another form of knowledge beyond experience is the ability of small children to speak in an unknown language that they could not possibly have learned through ordinary means. This phenomenon is called xenoglossy. Since language requires months and years of repetition and practise to learn, science is at a loss to explain how anyone, especially a young child, could speak a language that he has never been exposed to. In the context of past lives, however, xenoglossy is simply another example of something learned in the past that carries over to the present life.
Quoting a case in "Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery," Bowman says that a prominent New York physician and his wife found their twin baby boys conversing between themselves in an unknown vernacular. The children were eventually taken to the foreign language department of Columbia University where none of the professors could identify their speech...until a professor of ancient languages happened to pass by and was amazed to discover that they were speaking ARAMAIC, a language current at the time of Jesus Christ....
"The boys weren't just mimicking a few words: they were conversing with enough proper Aramaic syntax and vocabulary for the expert to be able to recognize the language.
In one case as two year old boy remembering the life of a 19th century sailor, used terms like "spanker" sail. and when he knocked over a jelly jar, asked his mother if he would have to do "haze," the correct term for punishment in vintage sailor slang..."
23 June 2009
DO YOUR TINGING FINGERS LEAD YOU TO THE RIGHT INFORMATION ?
21 June 2009
SUNDAY JUNE 21st 2009 IS FATHERS DAY - TODAY!
This emphasises the importance of keeping family records NOW for generations in the future!
19 June 2009
CARL JUNG (FATHER OF JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY) and SYNCHRONICITY
15 June 2009
13 June 2009
SPOOKY ANCESTOR LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER ?????
One person told me that they were struggling with trying to read some pretty difficult handwriting and had not not found the family they were looking for on a census. They were just about ready to give up when they felt one of the LDS missionaries who staff the local Family History Center, touch them on the shoulder. Except no one was there. And when they looked down to the microfilm desk again, they realized that their family group was right on that page!
11 June 2009
We're readinig POSTCARDS FROM HEAVEN by DAN GORDON
As quoted in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, "Gordon hails from 13 generations of Chassidic rabbis, and while his immediate family has long shed strict, Chassidic Jewish tradition, the stories in his book illustrate, in secular terms but with the skill of a master Chassidic raconteur, the presence of God in everyday life. "The recirculation of the soul,. kid of the belief in reincarnation, isn't foreign to Judaism at all or our literature," Gordon said.
Orit Arfa writing.
09 June 2009
27 May 2009
25 May 2009
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD in PENNSYLVANIA by WILLIAM J. SWITALA
by WILLIAM J. SWITALA
Stackpole Books - Pennsylvania C 2001
This is a book recommendation. Get yourself a copy if you're interested in seeing maps with routes. Now the maps leave much to be desired. They don't show the TOPOGRAPHY of the terrain, and so what may look like an easy trip of fifteen miles as the crow flies is actually over Appalachian mountains, rivers, etc. Still, this book gives us the strong impression of the abolitionist movements, the slave catchers, the safe zones (relatively speaking) and much more; on the route to Canada or other places where a slave could be a free human being, there was a lot of help. The Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists (but not the Southern Baptists), and many others were by conviction against slavery.
Of course millions of people on this earth are still slaves! Check out the National Geographic for reports on this issue.
23 May 2009
Are YOU Suffering From GENEALOGICAL MYOPIA ? !
I know that sometimes stepping away from your research for a while, though it may take time to reorient yourself to your notes, is a good idea because getting too sure of your theories may actually prevent you from having some new tactics.
When you IGNORE documents because you've decided too soon that they are not valuable to your research ...
When you believe without question what a family member or other informant has told you about people, places, or the loss of documents ...
You may have a case of GENEALOGICAL MYPOPIA !
21 May 2009
FORENSIC GENEALOGY ?
20 May 2009
From PSYCHIC ROOTS by HENRY Z. JONES - HELEN HINCHLIFF's Forward
by Henry Z. Jones C 1993
published by Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc.
"In 1983, in honor of my recent discovery of genealogy, my brother, Timothy Hinchcliff, made a yarn painting for me entitled Old Soul. Without really knowing a genealogist's sources or methods, Tim used thousands of colored threads to depict his view that I am a sojourner between the living and the dead. Coincidentally, the picture captured the essence of this book. In the lower left corner, lighting my path with magic crystals is Old Soul, most easily imagined as a friendly white ghost. In the center are my ancestors, ranged in a circle. They are connected by a mysterious umbilical cord to Old Soul and to a second circle composed of my living relatives who reside in the upper right corner. Guided by Old Soul, I trace a path between them, learning from each, communing with each."
18 May 2009
From BARBARA BUSH - MATRIARCH OF A DYNASTY by PAMELA KILIAN
On pages 138-139 we read that on July 17, 1989 President George Bush and his wife First Lady Barbara Bush went to Leiden, in the Netherlands. It was the first visit by a president of the United States to the country. President Bush spoke and learned from the mayor that there were two Bush family ancestors who had sailed on the Mayflower to America in 1620 who came from Leiden! They were Francis Cooke, a signer of the Mayflower Compact and Hester De La Noye, who had a daughter named Jane who was Bush's "grandmother" 11 generations back. The mayor also announced that Hesters' sister Marie had a child named Philippe,whose grandchild - seven times removed - was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. "Two sisters, two presidents," Mayor Goekoop said.
This book is published by Thomas Dunne Books - St Martin's Press and is copyright 2006 by the author, Pamela Kilian. The excerpt above is slightly altered.
Barbara Bush's genealogical relationship to various French aristocrats has been explored in other publications. Is it true that that most elected presidents have more "royal" blood than the candidates they beat?
15 May 2009
BRIAN WEISS - A CONTEMPORARY PAST LIFE RESEARCHER
13 May 2009
ACROSS TIME and DEATH by JENNY COCKELL : ABOUT HYPNOTIC REGRESSION
11 May 2009
TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE DATABASE
10 May 2009
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY - OUR MATRIATCHAL ANCESTORS !
Examples include baptismals that only have the child's father's name. Wills that cannot have included females because females were not allowed to inherit, and so much else that we now -for good reason- consider to be sexism.
08 May 2009
"HOBBIT" HUMANS AN ENTIRE OTHER SPECIES
"About a metre (three feet) tall and weighing 30 kilos (65 pounds), the tiny, tool-making hunters may have roamed the remote island as recently as 8,000 years ago. Their fossils are about 18,000 years old.
Many scientists have said Homo floresiensis, as the creature is now formally known, was a prehistoric human stunted by natural selection over millennia through a process called insular dwarfing."
---- Marlowe Hood
05 May 2009
Do you have a GENEALOGY RESEARCH Story to Share ?
02 May 2009
From CAROL BOWMAN's CHILDREN'S PAST LIVES
How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child
by Carol Bowman
C 1997 by Carol and Steve Bowman
A Bantam Book
Carol Bowman says that children can remember past lives spontaneously, through hypnotherapy-past life regression, or through dreams. On pages 250-251 of her book she tells the story of Jenny Cockrell who had childhood dreams and past life memories while a child in England in the 1950's. She saw herself as a grown woman, named Mary, who lay dying, sobbing with grief and tormented by guilt because she was leaving behind eight children.
"By the time she was an adult, Jenny had enough information from her dream and from her waking visions to trace her former identity to Mary Sutton, a woman who had lived in a small town north of Dublin, and who had died of fever, leaving behind eight small children. Jenny's long quest to discover her past life identity culminated in an emotional reunion with Mary Sutton's grown children in Ireland. Almost every detail that Jenny remembered was confirmed, including some things Jenny knew about Mary that no one outside the family could have known. Most importantly, after this contact with her children from a former life, Jenny was healed of the guilt and sadness that had tormented her since she was a small child...
"Across Time and Death" is the book...
30 April 2009
SOUTH AFRICAN's HAVE THE GREATEST GENETIC MIX - AFRICANS THE MOST DIVERSE IN A RACE
About Henry "Hank" Z. Jones
One of the reasons I appreciate his books is that they include the testimonials of both professional and hobbyist genealogy researchers who believe in dreams, intuition, ancestor spirit research guides, and receiving information on roots quests that comes from extraordinary means, proving that not all genealogists are afraid of this! There are many stereotypes of whose into genealogy that are not true. One of them is that genealogists are mostly members of the Latter Day Saints (formerly known as The Mormons), because they do seem to have a vast amount of archived data.
In the diversity of this United States of America (and the world!) genealogist are practitioners of many different faiths or spiritual viewpoints.
27 April 2009
CUNARD SHIP LINE
There were many smaller ships, smaller lines. For the steamship, the depth of the harbor had everything to do with what ships could dock there. Le Havre, France to Southhampton, Britian, to New York City, was a popular route during the Industrial Era immigration to the United States.
24 April 2009
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PAPERS FOUND IN LONDON - FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR !
22 April 2009
GARY ZUKAV from THE SEAT OF THE SOUL
"From the multi sensory point of view, insights, intuitions, hunches, and inspirations are messages from the soul, or from advanced intelligences that assist the soul on its evolutionary journey. The multi sensory personalty, therefore, honors intuition in a way that the five-sensory personality does not. To the five-sensory personality, intuitions are curiosities. To the multi sensory personality, they are promptings from, and links to, a perspective of greater comprehension and compassion that its own."
page 147, as in More Psychic Roots, by Henry Z. Jones, Jr.
19 April 2009
HENRY LOUIS GATES - W.E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African- American Research
12 April 2009
We're reading THE JEWS OF THE UNITED STATES by Hasia Diner....
This book is quite interesting a read for anyone, Jewish or not, interested in American History. And as most genealogist know, reading around the history is likely to give you clues when you are researching, especially when it comes to following patterns of migration.
Jews of the United States
1654-2000
by Hasia R. Diner
University of California Press
09 April 2009
SYCHRONICITY IN GENEALOGY ?
Check back in !
06 April 2009
We're reading IN SEARCH OF OUR ROOTS by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
27 March 2009
GENOGRAPHIC PROJECT NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY and YOU !
25 March 2009
PENNSYLVANIA BONES MAY BE 19th Century IRISH IMMIGRANTS WHO DIED
"We feel a kinship with these men," said Immaculata history professor William Watson. "Righting an injustice has led us to this point."
Imagine leaving Ireland behind, immigrating to the United States to help build the rail road, and dying of cholera before you could... NOW THE GRAVE HAS BEEN FOUND !
23 March 2009
DNA REVEALS STORY OF DAD's APPEARANCE
18 March 2009
ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY's REVIEW OF ABRAHAM's CHILDREN by JON ENTINE
Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People
by Jon Entine
Grand Central Publishing - New York
This book was utterly fascinating, as Jon Entine examines the question of Who is Jewish now, and Who was Jewish when? Is being Jewish about belief - conversion - practice ? Or genetics? Or a unique combination of BOTH?
DNA plays the strongest role in this process of discovery yet does not give us the definitive answer on this quest.
Of great interest to genealogists, DNA evidence for heritage, be that ethnic group, tribe, or race, seems to leading some of us on paths we didn't know we would take. Jon Entine gives it his best, examining and contributing to the controversies.
15 March 2009
KNIGHTS at the TIME OF THE NORMANS in ENGLAND
05 March 2009
OUT OF WORK ? WHAT A GREAT TIME TO WORK ON GENEALOGY !
02 March 2009
SAME FAMILY REINCARNATION From RETURN FROM HEAVEN by CAROL BOWMAN
by Carol Bowman C 2001 EDIT
Beloved Relatives Reincarnated Within Your Family
HarperCollins Publishers
Page 140-141, hardback about how a soul selects its next life...
"All the regression studies agree that the planning process is done in collaboration with the spiritual guides. The guides present the soul with options for the next life. The soul's previous actions, or karma, determine the parameters and limits of its options. based on its past performance, the soul is offered a menu of lives that will teach it what it needs to learn next. It does not have unlimited choice. If that were the case, why would anyone choose a life of hardship or tragedy.'
"Even with karma limiting the options, the soul still has a mind-boggling number of lives to choose from. The coordination it requires to choose the right one is complex, a matter of balancing multidimensional factors in intricate ways. The decision must consider not only the needs of the soul, but must also coordinate its choice with the needs and plans of other souls it expects to join - particularly the parents... Relationships are vital to our learning and spiritual growth. So, arranging to reunite with certain souls in the coming life is a central element of the reincarnation plan. All the studies agree that we often reincarnate with souls we have been close to in other lifetimes. We may choose to return to those who nurtured and supported our growth in the past... To learn forgiveness, we may elect to return to someone who hurt us or did us wrong. ....Because relationships are so important, and because family relationships are so intense, it makes sense that a soul would have many, many reasons to return to the family it just left. This is why, I believe, same-family reincarnation is so common."