CASTLE

The development of Castles from wood and earthwork fortresses to built in cities in Europe is a fascinating one... And it's all tied in with the way power and military might were entwined.

REVIEW of ROYAL BABYLON by KARL SHAW

Ever get crazy to prove you have royal ancestry? Well, you might change your mind, when you read ROYAL BABYLON, a book that exposes the madness of the royal houses of Europe. Mental illness attributed to way too much intermarriage, which has reinforced genetic tendencies to be out of one's mind, is offered as a reason for outrageous behaviors including violence and perversion. No wonder some Princesses could not get marriage offers. No wonder some of us are more than happy with being common!

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.

KNIGHT RIDING IN PLUMES

1940 CENSUS coming up - WE CAN BARELY STAND TO WAIT!

The 1940 U.S. census is going to be released in a few months and most of us can barely stand to wait! Actually you don't have to. You can use CITY DIRECTORIES to get an address for a family, and then be ready to find the ENUMERATION DISTRICT for that address as a first step, as it will be some time before any of the INDEXED DATABASES catch up with the volume of need for information.

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!

DISCOVERING YOUR CHILD's IMAGINARY PLAYMATE is an ANCESTOR

I've heard of this happening more than once. What's the proof? More than one family roots searcher has found the unusual name of a great grandparent or other family member they knew nothing about - until they did their research - coming out of the mouth of a child when they go playing with their imaginary playmate.

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.

JACOBUS AWARD

The Jacobus Award is given for the best in research writing in the genealogy field. Treat yourself to reading about someone else's family to see what excellent writing is in this category!

From JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MC CULLOUGH - ABIGAIL ADAMS on PARIS, FRANCE

pages 303-304

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

ALL OTHER NIGHTS a FICTION OF THE CIVIL WAR by DARA HORN

I'm linking to Dara Horn's website here, and it can say more than I can about her amazing Civil War novel, which I just read - couldn't put it down. Stayed in bed most of the day reading, reading, reading...

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...

THE PRESIDENTS OFFICIAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE

FactCheck.org is here with the jpeg files you can see yourself, to decide if President Barach Obama's birth certificate is official. For about a year there have been rumors and "proofs" that he was actually born in Kenya or that something was amiss on the certificate from Hawaii.

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.

REVIEW of OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS by PETER SILVER

OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS
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.