I'M POSTING FROM THE FAMILY HISTORY CENTER - LOS ANGELES !

I'm posting from the NEWLY OPENED LATTER DAY SAINTS FAMILY HISTORY CENTER. (THIS POST IS POPULAR AND HAS BEEN UPDATED JANUARY 12, 2012)

I just took the tour and WOW!

The facility is larger and absolutely BEAUTIFUL; light, airy, cream walls and blue and green carpet with a leaf motif and large sepia toned photographs of ancestors of various ethnic groups - the Irish, the Poles, etc.

THERE ARE DOZENS OF COMPUTERS set up to link to useful genealogy research sites! There are large classrooms for telecasting classes from Salt Lake and teaching while being telecast to Salt Lake. The Church did not waste a dime in designing and implementing a state of the art facility.

HERE ARE SOME CHANGES :

ALL CENSUS RECORDS ON MICROFILM ARE GONE.ALL PASSENGER/SHIP RECORDS ON MICROFILM ARE GONE.

(This may not be so positive. I have in the past tried to duplicate my research on Ancestry (which is available for free at the Family History Center) and COULD NOT DO IT. I'm great at figuring out bad handwriting and most database entry people must not be... I would rather turn microfilm and read page after page than try guessing some of the mispellings that would lead to the same information. I've also found information ON THE BACK of handwritten cards and indexes.)

THERE ARE STILL MICROFILMS AND MICROFILM READERS.
TO ORDER FILMS YOU MUST DO SO ON LINE.

ALL THE BOOKS THAT ARE NO LONGER UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW ARE REMOVED TO SALT LAKE WHERE THEY ARE BEING DIGITIZED.

THE OLD MAP ROOM/MAPS IS GONE.

SOME OF THE LINKS ON THE COMPUTERS such as INTERNMENT.COM are still paid or trial; you don't need to come into the library to do that. FOOTNOTE DATABASE IS FREE OF CHARGE WHEN USED AT FAMILY HISTORY CENTER. In some cases I'm having better luck with Footnote than Ancestry. The name of Footnote is now Fold3.

THERE IS SOMETHING POSITIVE TO BE SAID FOR A DESTINATION THAT IS DEVOTED TO GENEALOGY and to BE SURROUNDED BY OTHER RESEARCHERS. I CONTINUE TO BE INSPIRED BY HEARING OTHER RESEARCHERS STORIES including their research methods.

There are some rules and regulations stated which I am glad for. One of those is no sexual harassment or vulgarity. I am glad this is the case as that is a problem I had with a male or two while researching a few years ago. It was enough to make me stop using LDS and moving my base of operations elsewhere.

IS THERE A GHOST UNDER THAT ARMOR?

PEONY IN LOVE by LISA SEE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK EXCERPT and REVIEW

PEONY IN LOVE by LISA SEE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK EXCERPT and REVIEW

Page 19

"I lit incense, knelt on a pillow, and looked up at the two large ancestor portrait scrolls that hung on the wall above the altar table. On the left was my grandfather, an imperial scholar who had brought great dignity, security, and wealth to our family. In the painting, he sat in his robes, his legs spread, a fan open in one hand. His face was stern, and the skin around his eyes was wrinkled from wisdom and worry. He died when I was four, and y memory of him was of a man who preferred silence from me and had little tolerance for my mother or for the other women in our household.

"To the right of the altar table in another long school was my father's mother. She also wore a severe expression. She had a position of great honor, in our family and in the country, as a martyr who'd died in the Cataclysm (note: this is the overthrow of the Ming dynasty by the Manchus). In the years leading up to her sacrifice, my grandfather had served as the Minister of Works in Hangzhou. My grandfather left the Chen Family Villa here in Hangzhou and traveled two days by boat and by palanquin to live with him in Yangzhou. Not realizing disaster was coming, my parents went to Yangzhou for a visit. Soon after they arrived, the Manchu marauders invaded..."


Page 112

"Forty-nine days after my death, my family crowded into our ancestral hall for the dotting of my ancestor tablet and final goodbye. Storytellers and a handful of singers gathered in the courtyard. Someone of great distinction - a scholar or member of the literati - is always given the honor of placing the final precious dot on the ancestor tablet. Once this was done, a third of my soul would be transferred to the tablet, where it would watch over my family. The dotting would allow me to be worshipped as an ancestor and give me a place to inhabit on earth for all eternity. My dotted ancestor tablet would also be the object through which my family would send their offerings to sustain me in the afterworld, make requests for my help, and provide comfort to me as a way of averting potential hostility In the future, when my family embarked on a new business venture, named a child, or considered a marriage proposal, they would consult me through my tablet..."

C 2007 by Lisa See
Random House Publishers

REVIEW: PEONY IN LOVE was a wonderful read as a novel. It is set in a turbulent time in which some Chinese women took advantage of a revolution to venture out of lives lived actually hobbled by foot binding and the seclusion expected of upper class women. These women became poets and writers, many writing of the suffering of love. It's also apparent that Lisa See did her research not only on the literary progress of women in China in the 17th century but also into the Chinese spiritual belief in hungry ghosts, those who died without having family to honor them. The excerpts above is from the early stages of the novel and in the voice of Peony who becomes a hungry ghost herself. I hope I've tantalized you into reading this novel!

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THE HEIGHT OF SOCIETY - THE MILLER SISTERS - COME FROM MAYFLOWER ANCESTRY

Marie-Chantal Miller married Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece, and her wedding in London was attended by royals and aristocrats - so many that some had to watch on TV at the reception. Her sisters married into the Gettys and the Von Furstenbergs. Would you believe that these daughters of a billionaire come from all American roots on their father's side, traceable to Mayflower passengers?

William Addams Reitwiesner presents his research at the site linked here, and it really is so much fun to read some of those old names: Hugh Squarebriggs, Experience Mitchell, and Hepzibah Washburn.

Their only illustrious ancestor seems to be a Jewish businessman named Isaac Samuels, born in Poland/Prussia ca. 1785 and worth $100,000 dollars in the 1850's.

FALL is a TIME OF HARVEST, REST, REMEMBRANCE, and ANCESTOR WORSHIP

At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, the Fall equinox has recently passed, the Harvest Festivals are in high gear, and Thanksgiving in the United States - celebrating plenty and prosperity - is not far away.

Until recently, until the Industrial and then Technological Revolution, our ancestors lived around AGRICULTURE, and fall was a time of rest before the harshness of snowy and sometimes bitter winters.

It is during this season that the remembrance of our ancestors, be it through the Mexican DAY OF THE DEAD festivities (all those sugary funny skeletons going through the paces of daily life in the afterlife!) or ALL SOULS DAY (throughout Christendom).

Today I try to imagine what life so close to the earth and the weather and so dependent on local crops must have been. Today we live lives extended through better nutrition (vitamins!) and medicine, but in the past, at this time of year many people must have wondered if they would live through the winter to see the spring flowers bloom.

Today we are sheltered from death in many ways. We expect to live a long time and plan accordingly. When someone dies it is not so often at home but in a hospital, where professionals come to take the body away; it used to be the relatives did so and laid the person out at home.

This is a good time to collect the memories of our living relatives and to ask their cooperation in our genealogy and family history projects. You may want to record the stories of funerals - the wakes, walk around cemeteries recording information from tombstones, or simply light a candle to those ancestors who help you in your research!

EVERY OLD PHOTO TELLS A WHOLE STORY

114 YEAR OLD MAN CELEBRATES HIS BIRTHDAY TODAY !

"Walter Breuning was born on Sept. 21, 1896, in Melrose, Minn., and moved to Montana in 1918, where he worked as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway for 50 years.

Breuning was to give a speech at an invitation-only birthday party at the Rainbow Retirement Community in downtown Great Falls, where he lives, with a guest list that includes Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and representatives from Guinness World Records."


Click on the title to get to the link.

THE RED STAR LINE TRANSPORTED

transported 2.7 million people from Antwerp to American ports from 1873 to 1934, and it is estimated that half its emigrant passengers were Jewish?


From August 2010 Tribe Magazine page 38

BILL SACKS by MAXFIELD PARRISH

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY YIZKOR BOOKS

There are several resources for Yizkor books (Books that Record and thus Remember those Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II) but I just found this one from THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, which gives you VIEWABLE books on line... THIS IS AN EXPERIENCE!

Millions of people who were not Jewish were also killed by the Nazis, such as Rom (gypsies), Catholic clergy, and Polish Christian Intelligentsia, and it is my hope that there will be comprehensive memory books for them too someday.

A PRINCESS FOUND by SARAH CULBERSON and TRACY TRIVAS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

A PRINCESS FOUND by SARAH CULBERSON and TRACY TRIVAS 

SARAH CULBERSON's search for her birth parents took her to Sierra Leone, Africa and the devastation of that country due to war. So many children were left without limbs. As a result of meeting her birth father and being accepted by the whole village she started a Foundation to support the school.

Sarah wanted to meet her birth parents, though she had a happy childhood with her parents and siblings in Morgantown, West Virginia, soon after her 18th birthday. Luckily her parents and some locals had enough information to get her started and over time she came to understand their history and to accept herself as is.

She resolved the mystery of her birth mother, a white woman first, and then her African father. He was a student at the university and her mother could not cope with raising her on her own.

None of this took extensive genealogy research because people knew people and were willing to divulge information but it did take personal courage and openness.

The book is copyright the authors and published by Saint Martin's Press, and should be of interest to anyone who is facing a similar search.

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THE RED QUEEN by MATT RIDLEY : BOOK EXCERPT : THE SIX CIVILIZATIONS OF EARLY HISTORY and FERTILITY

THE RED QUEEN by MATT RIDLEY  

Page 198-199

"The six independent "civilizations" of early history - Babylon, Egypt, India, China, Aztec Mexico, and Inca Peru - were remarkable less for their civility than for their concentration of power. They were all ruled by men, one man at a time, whose power was arbitrary and absolute....WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the cast accumulation of power was always translated into prodigious sexual productivity.... The Babylon King Hammurabi had thousands of slave "wives" at his command. The Egyptian Pharaoh Akenaten procured 317 concubines and "droves" of consorts. The Aztec ruler Montezuma enjoyed 4,000 concubines. The Indian emperor Udayama preserved 16,000 consorts in apartments ringed with fire and guarded by eunuchs. The Chinese emperor Fei-ti had ten thousand women in his harem. The Inca Atahualpa... kept virgins on tap throughout the kingdom."

The women were kept to breed the emperor's children...

"Measures to enhance the fertility of the harem were common... Wet nurses, who allowed women to resume ovulation buy cutting short their breast-feeding periods, date from at least the code of Hammurabi in the eighteenth century B.C... The Tang dynasty emperors of China kept careful records of dates of menstruation and conception in the harem so as to be sure to copulate only with the most fertile concubines... These harems could hardly have been more carefully designed as breeding machines, dedicated to the spread of emperors genes.

C Matt Ridley 1993 HarperCollins was the publisher

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