CENTURIES OF CHILDHOOD by PHILIPPE ARIES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

CENTURIES OF CHILDHOOD 

A fascinating book well worth the time it takes to read it:

I was loaned a paperback copy, circa 1962. I see copies exist for sale and that there is a full text available for free (as above) so I'll start by saying that the author was respected and that the information is still valid as it was heavily researched and wonderfully transmitted. Translated from French, this book is a lot about France, with small references to other European countries and starts with the Middle Ages and moves forward into the 19th century. Most likely, though things developed along the same path in various countries, when is the question.

Childhood as a state of being separate from adulthood developed over a few hundred years until it is what it is today. Families experienced their children's deaths frequently, especially in infancy and early childhood, but there's a question about how emotionally involved they might be.  Paintings depict children who have died as family members though distant memories.  At the same time the death of a child was supposed to be aligned with the desire for a replacement.

Children "played" for a short while in their early years and then were considered to be adults. They participated in adult activities as their development allowed and that meant work. Of course, before compulsory education that was work around the house and farm or workshop with parents and other adults as teachers. At the same time housing didn't allow much for private spaces. So a person became aware of the realities of life in their place and time by observation and being expected to participate.

Over the years education as a destination, a place to go and be taught by a Master, such as boarding schools, developed. The "grade" one was in also had more to do with when one began schooling or what one already knew than age and so students at the same level could have a wide range of ages in the classroom. Depending on one's class or status the expectations and affordability varied quite a bit. The house developed into a dwelling with rooms and with separate rooms developed the idea that one had a right to privacy. One might sleep on the floor of the school along with other students and the teachers.

Clearly children also were aware of sexuality and may have participated in it without the expectations of a future age.

If you're like me and want to be left alone to read; for most of known history this would have been an impossibility especially for a woman.  And yet over time a distinction was made between a person who becomes educated and then graduates to a life long learner (me again).

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ARMENIAN GENEALOGY - HOLOCAUST - IT IS POSSIBLE

ARMENIAN WEEKLY ; TURKISH DATABASE FOR ARMENIANS - HOLOCAUST

A year or so ago, it was reported that the Turkish government had a web site to help people researching their Armenian genealogy and family history, and possibly to locate lost or missing family.  Children who were orphaned were given Turkish names and converted to the Muslim religion. Go to this article and try to achieve the website yourself.

EXCERPT: The reason for the extraordinary interest in these family tree reports was the claim that they contained much more information than previously available - information dating back as the early 1800's in some cases.  In addition, this was the first time such information was so easily accessible online from anywhere in the world.  The Internet soon filed with stories of Turkish citizens learning of Armenian and other ancestry they had not know about previously.

FREEDMAN BANK RECORDS - USEFULNESS

The Freedman Bank Records are sometimes useful to genealogy researchers and are available through FamilySearch, some online library collections, and other genealogy databases.    

Here is my experience with them:

First, after emancipation from slavery, citizens who had been enslaved were allowed to own bank accounts for the first time. However, at this time not all ex-slaves had names they liked. Some continued to use a surname of their latest slave-owner, for example, but they were free to rename themselves. As a result, a number of relatives might choose different surnames. And some would rename themselves first and last. And some tried on a surname and didn't like it and changed it again. Changing names did not require a legal process.

Came the day that an African American client of mine, who really only needed his mother's death certificate, and learned the oral history he had been given was not correct when he read it, asked me to go a little further. Sure, that his mother's name was highly unusual, I gave it a search in Freedman Bank and because the name was so unusual, I was lead to that his mother had been named after her ex-slave grandmother. (From there I proofed as much as possible.)  This was perhaps the fastest genealogy search I ever had that lead to the enslaved ancestor.

Another factor to consider is that the Freedman Bank didn't last too long.  According to FamilySearch, The Freedman's Savings and Trust company failed in 1874 and many lost their savings.

Additionally, I found surnames that were German or otherwise not distinctly African-American or of English origins in this database. Some people who were not ex-slaves or African American did deposit in Freedman Bank. The decision to have an account was probably as easy as that they lived near a branch or believed in the cause.  So these are BANK RECORDS and not everyone in the database was ever a slave.

And consider that ex-slaves may have deposited in one place and then moved.

Overall, I don't think this database is helpful to most people but it can't be skipped in case it is!

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HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

 Raymond G. Dobard and Jacqueline L. Tobin -authors

I loved this book because it's about art as communication, in this case the use of quilts to signal to slaves that wanted to run for their freedom that the time was ripe. Perhaps a house slave who knew when the plantation owners would be leaving on a trip would lay a quilt out - as the cover picture shows - as a sign.  More, the DESIGN of the quilt could be memorized and actually be a map or series of directions for the escaping slaves to follow.  Very clever!

I feel this book is a must read for anyone interested in American history or African-American history.

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MORNINGS ON MAIN by JODI THOMAS : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW (QUILTS as FAMILY HISTORY)

MORNINGS ON MAIN by JODI THOMAS (Fiction)

EXCERPT from Jodi Thomas' fiction book 'Mornings on Main' which takes place in a small farming adjacent town in Texas.

Page 323 of paperback

'Jillian couldn't stop studying the history of the town written in stitches.  Embroidered in flower bouquets and black shadows draped over headstones ... Pink roses of births and lacy ivy for deaths...'

REVIEW:

I don't normally read books of the romance genre but this book came into my life on a rainy day and I decided to give it a try.  Characters that at first seemed implausible - especially as a cast - grew on me and slowly so that I found the ending satisfying. Character Gram is an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who also owns a quilting shop. Character Jillian is a woman born to a drifter who did his duty by her and then left her to drift on her own. Of course a woman with no roots, no friends, and no family needs a town where it seems every family has a long history and a man who cannot by heritage or integrity leave it.

Of genealogy interest is that the Jillian character is in search of her father and story of her birth. Gram is able to tell her, amidst memory lapses, that her mother was a married woman who left town but once lived on a farm nearby. Now as a genealogist, as I was reading this book I wanted to tell the characters how to find out more.  Jillian's love interest finds a newspaper article about her father who was in town for the rodeo and he's able to verify a brief employment with a local company that had employee records. 

The stories that serve as the basis for quilts left behind in the store helps create the small town in Texas atmosphere.

Which reminds me that YOU might just have a story quilt in your attic. 

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"BLACK BLOOD" ALREADY IN ROYAL FAMILY ? DIANA's INDIA HERITAGE

Baby Boy Sussex has been born and of course the world awaits that first photo.

WASHINGTON POST : BRITAIN'S BLACK QUEEN : Will Meghan Markle ... article by Deneen L. Brown

EXCERPT: Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, who bore the King 15 children, was of African descent.  Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Queen Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor.

In the 13th century, " Alfonso III of Portugal conquered a little town named Faro from the Moors," said Valdes, a researcher on the 1996 FRONTLINE PBS documentary, "Secret Daughter."  He demanded the governor's daughter as a paramour.  He had three children with her."

Read the full article at the link.  It's very interesting.

And then this older article:

ABROAD IN THE YARD: PRINCE WILLIAM DNA - INDIAN ANCESTRY
This article appeared in an Ancestry (The genealogy site) article. 
Prince William will be the first British King with proven ancestry from India, a DNA test has revealed.  His rare mitochondrial DNA comes from his 5 X great grandmother, "a dark-skinned native of Bombay."

EXCERPT:  (Prince William's) genetic link to India was proven by saliva samples from relatives who share his direct maternal (mother Diana's) lineage to Eliza Kewark.  She lived at the start of the 19th century in western India, "Without benefit of matrimony," with his Scottish ancestor Theodore Forbes, an East India Company merchant. ...

Geneticist Dr. Jim Wilson of BritainsDNA, who carried out the tests, found that Eliza's descendants had an incredibly rare tpe of mtDNA (haplogroup R30b), so far recorded in only 14 other people - 13 from India and one from Nepal. Dr. Wilson said that the mtDNA results, combined with the findings of South Asian DNA in the rest of the genome, meant that the evidence of Prince William's Indian heritage was "unassailable."


NOTE: Eliza had been reported as "Armenian," in other articles.

DNA OF CHRISTIAN CRUSADERS NOT EVIDENT IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES

TECHTIMES : ANCIENT DNA REVEALS CRUSADERS...  by Allan Adamson 

EXCERPT:  Chris Tyler-Smith, a genetics researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues extracted DNA from the 13th century remains of nine medieval crusaders.  The remains were found in a mass burial pit near a crusader castle in Sidon, Lebanon... "We show that all of the Crusaders' pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population,: the researchers wrote in their study.

And this DAILY MAIL - CRUSADERS MARRIED LOCAL WOMEN - SONS FELL IN BATTLE

EXCERPT: These mixed families were short-lived however, with brutal battles wiping out the offspring and modern-day inhabitants showing no relationship to the Crusaders.... Analysis of DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century shows the family members often died together in battle from horrific wounds.

****
I'm lucky - and not - to "know" that one of my ancestors was alive in the 1400's. 

Trying to prove this, however, is a nightmare. I'm at about 1820 and only back to a GG Grandparent on this old, almost extinct surname.  When I imagine my long ago ancestors, I research the history of their time and place - their niche.  As this was a wealthy noble, I recently looked at a web site that gave some examples of the kind of clothing he would have worn and tried to imagine if he or any of his family were Crusaders. He was probably an Italian who moved to Central Europe. I'm not a snob about nobility.  One of the reasons it's exciting for a researcher to attach to nobility is that there is a greater chance of records and documents having been made and so being able to go back further.

PUERTO RICO GENEALOGY RESEARCH? HUNTER COLLEGE RESOURCES MAY HELP!

CENTROPR HUNTER COLLECTIONS - PUERTO RICO

Search around this site.  There is probably more about Puerto Rican arts and culture and important people than average citizens, but it's a start.  Hunter College is located in New York City which has had a substantial Puerto Rico-an population.  And remember when writing your family history to include rich ethnic and cultural details.

FAMILY TREE

JUDAISM as MATRIARCHAL CULTURE : JEWISH GENEALOGY

Walking the dog, I got into a conversation with a new neighbor who happens to be an obstetrician and Jewish.  Still delivering babies though well past the usual retirement age, the joke goes that he's seen half the town naked - because he delivered them. Must say, he is up on genetic testing as well as invitro. He mentioned that he delivered a woman's grandchild, she being the surrogate for her daughter. He also told me - and I had not heard this before - WHY Jewish culture is matriarchal.  Simply, "The men were taken away as slaves and the women had to carry on."

Jewish genealogy is extremely popular and there are many cooperative projects.  Some of this, I feel, is part of the urge towards Americans finding their roots after forgetting about them for a couple generations, some of it is surely because of the devastating effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people. DNA is adding an interesting aspect to genealogical research because some people are using it to try to confirm Jewish ancestry just as some are using it to try and confirm Native American ancestry.

My experience is that while some European Jewish records are superior to Christian records, because they give interesting information not found in most Baptismal records, overall there are special challenges.  For instance the name of the midwife and/or the name of the Rabbi who did a circumcision, which may indicate the congregation or temple a family belonged to, is listed.  This seems to be about a concern that the baby be handled in a kosher way and a certainty of Jewishness.

I once had a student who started the class with a negative attitude, that because her family had all "perished" she could not do genealogy. This is simply not true.  Genealogy like history is so niche specific. At the time I was teaching that class there were websites for people to register themselves as survivors similar to the ones that match birth parents with children they gave up for adoption. I showed this woman where she could let the world know she survived and possibly someone would find her. 

Today I find the Yad Vashem website to be increasingly comprehensive and a wealth of information.

Truly it seems as if there is more information on Jewish people of the holocaust era than ever.

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