BYZANTIUM THE LOST EMPIRE : JOHN ROMER HOST : DVD RECOMMENDATION

For more than 1000 years the Byzantine Empire was the greatest place on earth, a place that spread from Constantinople into German territories and into Syria. 

This is a two disk set and I watched it twice because it was so interesting, and while I watched it I thought of all the violence going on in the Middle East today. 

Greeks and Romans lived together in this empire, and in this empire great achievements were made in architecture and the arts. The finest of what was looted is still at St. Marks in Venice, Italy!

Over the last couple week's we have witnessed via the media the resignation of one Pope and the election of another, Pope Francis, who makes history as the first Jesuit and the first Pope who comes from the Americas.  I've read so very many articles around the resignation and election, from the journalistic to the speculative, from historical fact to strange prophecies which (I checked) the Catholic Church itself is not concerned with.

So I take a pause as the Easter and Passover Season is upon us, to reflect about how much life on earth has changed in the last 2000 years, and wonder if there will ever be both billions of people and peace on earth!

KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR : ARE YOU SEEKING NOBILITY IN YOUR FAMILY HISTORY?

NOBILITY? So few people on earth have the right to bear a title, but it's fun to learn that you too have some illustrious ancestor. Coat of Arms are fun too - but most people with a surname that has a Coat of Arms have no right to use it: that's just for fun too, to know that SOMEONE with your surname was ennobled.  Anyone who gave up their citizenship of another country to become an American citizen also gave up their right to bear arms or carry a title.  In those cases where an American got a title through marriage, it's more a courtesy to use it when addressing them here in the States.

THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE by NELL IRVIN PAINTER : BOOK EXCERPT

Page 263  ON SERVANTS (NOT SLAVES) WHO HAD TO PAY OFF THEIR SERVITUDE.

"It was true that if they survived the transatlantic voyage, sale, resale, and many years of servitude, freed people and their descendants tended to remain poor. But survivors occasionally rose into the ranks of the landowning. Of the 5,000 indentured servants transported to Virgina between 1670 and 1680, 241 managed to acquire their own land."

AMERICAN TAPESTRY by RACHEL L. SWARNS ON AMERICAN SLAVES PETITIONING COURTS TO BE FREE

EXCERPT: pages 251-251  in chapter 25 "Born Free" about the JUMPER FAMILY originating with Hagar Jumper on Dinwiddie County, Virginia.

Background : Hagar triumphed in court when she won her freedom - and that of her children and grandchildren - and soon appeared on lists of free blacks in the county. She had filed a lawsuit against her owner based on Indian (Native American) heritage.]

"Hagar was joining the nation's first communities of free blacks, which emerged after the American Revolution when some slaveholders embraced Democratic ideas.  One Maryland woman said she freed her slaves because holding black people in bondage contradicted "the inalienable Rights of Mankind."  That egalitarian spirit also inspired slaves, like Hagar, to take matters into their own hands and to fight for their liberty in the courts.  "Whole families," recalled one abolitionist, "were often liberated by a single verdict, the fate of one relative deciding the fate of many."  It is possible that Peter was descended from this line.  He and Dolly may have also been the children of slaves who were freed by their masters, or the progeny of white indentured servants or poor white women who had relationships and children with African slaves.  It was not uncommon for free blacks in Pittsylvania and Henry Counties, where the Jumpers lived, to report to the local courts that their mothers were white.  The petitions - filed by men and women hoping to gain their freedom through the courts - suggested that these mothers were close to their children and willing to testify on their behalf.

However they won their freedom, Dolly and Peter (Jumper) clearly joined the free black community at a time when It was growing at an unprecedented clip.  Between 1790 and 1810, the number of free blacks in the Unites States rose from 59, 466 - about 8 percent of all blacks - to 186,446 - about 13.5 percent of all blacks.  In Virginia, where the Jumpers lived, the free black population more than doubled during that time  By 1810, some 30, 570 African Americans - or 7.2 percent of the populations - were living free."

DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION - link here! RELAUNCHED AMERICAN SPIRIT MAGAZINE

DAR OFFICIAL WEBSITE  You can subscribe to the magazine on this link.

I've met people who researched for years hoping to prove that they belong in DAR (daughters) or SAR (sons) and one of the families I researched for just missed because their ancestor stayed on a boat to pay off the voyage for the rest of the family, who became Patriots, and whose lineages are in DAR and SAR.  That ancestor also missed out on applying for free land and so it went.

At worst, some feel DAR and SAR are really snobby groups.  At best you become a member of a group that is very patriotic and that truly loves this United States of America.

I personally cannot become a member simply because my ancestors came to the United States after the American Revolution as did millions of others.  That doesn't bother me at all.  I still consider myself a patriot.  (There are an increasing number of African Americans applying for DAR and SAR by the way!)

Anyway, my library has become a subscriber to their WONDERFUL AMERICAN SPIRIT Magazine, and I do mean WONDERFUL!

In the January - February 2013 issue is an article I especially loved called RESURRECTING HISTORIC CEMETERIES by Courtney Peter.   It begins; "Filled with blocks of stone attesting to lives once lived, historic cemeteries are like outdoor history museums that hold not only some of our countries earliest stone carvings and written history, but also clues about familial relationships, settlement patterns, and attitudes toward women."

If you love Colonial History this is a great magazine which may inform your research!

HOMELESS CHILDREN SHIPPED TO THE NEW WORLD : EXCERPT FROM THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE : ARE THERE DUTY BOYS OR WOMEN FROM BRIDAL BOATS IN YOUR FAMILY TREE?

pages 4  from the book "THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE" by Nell Irvin Painter

... "In 1618 the City of London and the Virginia Company forged an agreement to transport vagrant children. London would pay five pounds per head to the company for shipment on the Duty, hense the children's sobriquet "Duty Boys." Supposedly bound for apprenticeship, these homeless children - a quarter of them girls - were then sold into field labor for twenty pounds of tobacco each.

A first shipment of 100 homeless children landed in Virginia around Easter in 1619, some four months before the arrival of "20 and odd Negros." ...

The Virginia Company, ever entrepreneurial, also transported poor women on "bridal boasts," selling them in Virginia and Maryland for 120 pounds of tobacco. At this point in the seventeenth century, Britons, male and female, outnumbered Africans in American tobacco fields; even by the middle of the century, when Virginians population of settlers numbered about 11,000 only 300 were African.

Any of them - African, British, Scottish, or Irish - were lucky to outlive their terms of service." ...

LDS FAMILYSEARCH PROJECTS : UPLOADING MORE INFORMATION THAT CAN HELP YOU BREAK THAT BLOCK

I check the FAMILYSEARCH website from time to time to see what's new and recently I checked and (wow!) there was some new databases loaded up that allowed me to continue research on a branch of my own family that has caused me to run into a number of blocks over time.  Although I STILL WOULD PREFER TO BE ROLLING MICROFILM, rather than clicking a mouse and moving images across a computer screen, I now have the Declarations of Intent Index and then the Declarations of Intent from a state that is one of the more difficult to access information from.

I encourage you, if you are working on your own family history to check the familysearch.org site from time to time yourself. 

The databases you see on Family Search are the result of intensive volunteer projects carried out mostly by Latter Day Saints church members who are dedicated to the idea that genealogy databases should be free.  Microfilms are still rentable through interlibrary loans and for a reasonable fee (although I would like to see a system where a person can continue to rent for some time, so long as someone else is not waiting on the film.)