Veterans Day Ancestors-at-a-glance™

Here are some links to new Ancestors-at-a-glance™ charts for Veterans Day 2009. A few were warriors, and the others served or are serving our country in other ways that support American armed forces service people. 

Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the famous document that started it all, the Declaration of Independence. 

Francis Scott Key in the aftermath of a pivotal battle in our nation’s history, gave us the most well-known inspirational song of our nation, The Star-Spangled Banner. 

General Douglas MacArthur and General George S. Patton are probably the two most famous warriors of World War II, and they have both been immortalized in Hollywood films. 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt steered our nation through World War II and made the tough decisions that impacted all of our lives.

Kristine’s Uncle Donald was killed in action early in World War II and the USS Spangler was named in his honor. 

Senator John McCain has not only served our country as a warrior and endured the unimaginable horrors of being a POW, he has been a leading spokesman for our nation’s veterans from a number of wars. 

After “Saving Private Ryan,” famous Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks has also become a prominent figure head for World War II and veterans. He has been involved with the new National World War II Museum which just opened this month in New Orleans. 

The Family Forest® National Treasure Edition honors many of our nation’s veterans by passing along their heritage digitally to future generations in a way I feel certain would make them proud.

Veterans Day 2009 Poster

Lost Mad Men

What do the two hit TV series Lost and Mad Men have in common? 

One answer is Dwayne Shattuck. The other answer is networked family ties in the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition. 

Hollywood director and producer Dwayne Shattuck and his sister, Hollywood actress and best-selling author Shari Shattuck are first cousins once removed of a good friend of mine here on the Big Island, and they are related to the Angel of the Battlefield and founder of the American Red Cross (ARC), Clara Barton. They also all share Shattuck ancestors with famous Hollywood actor Matt Damon. 

A recent character on Mad Men has been Conrad Hilton, great-grandfather of Paris Hilton Paris shares Duvall ancestors with Wallis Warfield, Duchess of Windsor, President Harry Truman, VP Dick Cheney, Lonesome Dove star Robert Duvall, and President Obama. 

Lost co-star Matthew Fox is a distant cousin of mine. He shares Willard ancestors with Hollywood actress Carole Lombard, and author John Steinbeck. He shares Hubbard ancestors with US Education Secretary Arne Duncan , presidential hopeful Sarah Palin and also famous Hollywood actor Matt Damon. 

Matthew Fox is also said to be a descendant of the victor of the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War, Major-General George Gordon Meade. 

The edutaining Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™ and connecting audiences through actual family ties better than any other digital resource, either online or offline, as the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition will show you.

Julie and Julia

From the trailer I’ve seen, Julie and Julia looks like a fun movie.

 To add to the enjoyment, the Family Forest® Project has just posted some additional Ancestors-at-a-glance™ charts. 

One is for one of the main characters, Julia Child, and another is for the famous Hollywood actress who portrays her, Meryl Streep. 

According to the family history already mapped out in the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition, I share an important to me 1600’s ancestor with Julia Child. He is Mayflower Pilgrim George Soule. 

Julia and I also share ancestor George Soule with Amelia co-star Richard Gere and Dick Van Dyke. 

Contrary to what her unusual surname might lead one to believe, Meryl Streep has early American ancestry with much more common surnames, including some who came to America at about the same time as her character’s ancestor, and probably knew each other. 

Some of Meryl’s other ancestral surnames include Betts, Jackson, Walker, Ring, Dean, Howland, Wilkinson, Twining, Conyers, Lacy, Young, Kirk, Elliott, Chapman, Simpson, and Smith. 

One of Meryl’s famous cousins through their royally-descended ancestor Christopher Conyers is Britney Spears. 

If all of the cousins of the cast and characters of Julie and Julia go to see it, this motion picture will be the largest box office hit ever. 

The edutaining Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™ and connecting audiences through actual family ties better than any other digital resource, either online or offline, as the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition will show.

“And that’s the way it is.”

Some of the voices and faces of those celebrities who have brought us over a century of impactful news through radio and television are indelibly etched in our memories. Now millions of us can see that we have actual family ties to some of those voices and faces.

 Family Forest® Ancestors-at-a-glance™ charts from the new National Treasure Edition have just been posted for some of the instantly recognizable people from broadcasting. 

These new free charts are for Walter Cronkite, Lowell Thomas, Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, G. Gordon Liddy, Maria Shriver, Don Imus and Mike Huckabee.

“And that’s the way it is.”

Amelia Earhart

A new motion picture about America’s most beloved female aviator, Amelia, will be premiering at theatres on October 23, 2009. 

In advance of the release we have just posted a half-dozen related Ancestors-at-a-glance™ charts. 

One is for Amelia Earhart herself, one is for her husband, George “GP” Putnam, and one is for the famous Hollywood actor who will be portraying him, Richard Gere. 

In this role Richard will be portraying a cousin of California’s next Governor, Meg Whitman. Meg shares early New England Buckminster ancestors with “GP” Putnam. 

Another Buckminster cousin of Meg and GP is Bucky Fuller and he was a real life friend of Amelia. A video can be seen here of her in his futuristic Dymaxion car. 

And yet another Buckminster cousin is current US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. 

If all of the cousins of the cast and characters of Amelia go to see it, this motion picture will be the largest box office hit ever.

The edutaining Family Forest® Project is Networking Family History with Hollywood™ and connecting audiences through actual family ties better than any other digital resource, either online or offline, as the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition proves.

Introducing Ancestors-at-a-glance™

One of the most exciting features of the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition is the ability to generate visually engaging Ancestors-at-a-glance™ fan charts. 

The first of many of the free charts we will be posting to Ancestors-at-a-glance™ is for Prince William. 

There is a wealth of surprising knowledge on this one-page PDF. Simply use Adobe Acrobat Reader’s zoom and scroll features to explore it. 

As the name says, this is simply a glance at Prince William’s ancestry. For greater detail, dozens of centuries of his ancestry beyond ten generations, the source citations behind each note and connections, and much much more, you will be amazed and delighted by what you can discover in the new one-of-a-kind Family Forest® National Treasure Edition.

 

Rand McNally of Ancestral History

I rediscovered a great quote while thumbing through one of my very many stacks of research materials. It accurately describes one of the foundation concepts steering the growth of the Family Forest® Project. 

The quote is from Andrew McNally IV, president of Rand McNally and great-grandson of one of its co-founders. Andrew said “Making the world around us more understandable is what map-making has always been about.” 

One of our goals for the Family Forest® is to become for ancestral history what Rand McNally is for geography. For 14 years now human intelligence has been digitally indexing , which translates to mapping visually, thousands of years of recorded human history. 

Another of our goals is to have a combination Google Earth/Second Life type interface for virtually exploring the world’s largest maps of human genetic migration, which are generated by the highest quality and most intricately interconnected web of networked family ties. 

Please stay tuned for the introduction of 200 or so selected Family Forest® Kinship Reports from the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition which will connect countless millions of living people, through their own generation-by-generation family ties, to more celebrities and historical figures than any other resource available anywhere, either on or off line.

Anniversary Celebration

A curious thing happened to me a year ago, and I’m still wondering about it. 

Between drifting into unconsciousness after being told there was a chance I would not survive the operation, and waking up to the very enjoyable realization that I was still alive, the only thing I remember was hearing a voice speaking just two words. 

Repeating over and over for what seemed like a very long time was “George Soule, George Soule, George Soule, …….” 

According to the recorded history mapped out in the Family Forest®, George Soule of the Mayflower is one of my ancestors. Whatever it might have meant hearing his name repeated (one nurse suggested it was my guardian angel speaking to me), I felt that I was brought through the heart attack and bypass surgery for the purpose of bringing the Family Forest® Project to life. 

This last year has been one of the very best years of my life, and not only because life is so much sweeter when one comes that close to losing it. I can say unequivocally that this past year has been the most productive and personally fulfilling year I have ever had. 

The proof will be abundantly clear soon when the National Treasure Edition is released. Red Letter Days almost never happened during the first dozen years when the extremely broad foundation was being laid and the very tall framework was being erected. During this last year, not only did a Red Letter Day happen almost every day, many days the quantity and magnitude of the connections and enhancements were so large that a single day was like the equivalent of two or more Red Letter Days. 

Coinciding with this cloud nine 1st anniversary is my blissful 17^th wedding anniversary to my terrific wife Kristine. Life is very good!

Family Forest® Was First, Again

While history has taught us not to be surprised when we see Ancestry using stories we reported on first, we do expect more from a quality publication such as Forbes.

 The Forbes story reads as if the Brad Pitt and President Obama connection is a new discovery by Ancestry, but a story about this connection from us appeared two months ago. 

It also appears as if the Hugh Hefner and President Bush connection was discovered by Ancestry, but a CBS story about this connection from FamilyForest.com appeared five years ago.  Even National Public Radio in 2007, talked about our famous Hollywood and Presidential connections in the Family Forest®. 

The Family Forest® is the most extensively networked system of family ties available anywhere, as the upcoming Family Forest® National Treasure Edition will conclusively prove. It can connect large audiences personally, through actual family ties to Hollywood, the evening news, and history books. 

Consider the Source and read another Barack Obama cousins story.

Congratulations Alec Baldwin

Kristine and I were very pleased to see that Alec Baldwin was selected as a host at Turner Classic Movies earlier this month. We feel this way not only because of the excellent performance he will certainly deliver in that important role, but for Family Forest® reasons.

 

Alec and his famous brothers have been lineage-linked in the Family Forest® since before the New World Edition (we first mentioned his connection here and more recently here), but only skeletally and only as far back as the early seventeenth century. By strategically focusing on his ancestry since the TCM announcement, Alec’s ancestral history has now been connected into the central corridor of genealogy and he has become one of the most extensively networked people within the Family Forest®.

 

Everyone who watches TCM as regularly as we do knows that Robert Osborne is a very tough act to follow, even for someone with as much talent and abilities as Alec Baldwin. So we hope Alec will accept our offer to help him provide an additional new feature at TCM.

 

Alec can see more of his own ancestral pathways, according to recorded history,

mapped out in the Family Forest® than anywhere else, either online or offline. The same can be said for many of the Hollywood stars in TCM movies.

 

The powerful services we provide here at Millisecond Publishing Company makes us uniquely positioned to help him connect large audiences personally, through actual family ties to the cast and characters in many of the great classic films he will be presenting at TCM.

 

The next time that Alec introduces Plymouth Adventure on TCM (see trailer here), he can use the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition to let viewers know the name of his own ancestor who is portrayed in the movie.

 

I can unequivocally declare from my own personal experience that it is a truly magical moment the first time you see one of your own ancestors portrayed in a classic Hollywood movie. It is an enriching experience we hope every TCM fan will have. Best wishes cousin Alec.