ANGEL WITH VIOLIN

WISHING YOU WONDERFUL HOLIDAYS.... if not with your family then with your family of friends.

MARILYN MONROE FBI FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT - USES

If you'll go to the link above, you'll get to read Marilyn Monroe's FBI file, as found through the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT. You may feel that it's terrible that any person be so invaded in their privacy, and all wrong about obtaining someones file.

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.

THE MANY LIVES OF MARILYN MONROE by SARAH CHURCHWELL

The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe: the title has nothing to do with past lives. Instead the author, Sarah Churchwell examines all the different ways that various authors of biographies of Marilyn have constructed or reconstructed her life from research, often dependent on each other's books. What really is true?

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

ELLIS ISLAND - IF YOU HAD A BETTER TICKET YOU GOT OFF AT CASTLE ROCK

It's true... while we have visions of poor people getting out of the steerage passenger compartment of the ship with all their worldly possession bundled in cloth we forget that many immigrants came to America on first and second class tickets and when the ship pulled into New York Harbor they were let off first at Castle Rock - not the Ellis Island processing point.

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.

AMERICAN HOLIDAY SEASON IS UPON US

Here we are - another holiday season!

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.