Knowledge can be enjoyably empowering, and for the last few years Thanksgiving has meant so much more to me. For most of my life I had no idea that I had any type of connection to the first Thanksgiving. I had almost no awareness beyond the generation before me and the generation after me. 

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that according to recorded history, I had an ancestor who came to America in the Mayflower. What’s more, he would have been present at the very first Thanksgiving. 

This newfound knowledge brings more meaning to this holiday for me, and it is my Thanksgiving wish that those who have not discovered their own personal connection to the first Thanksgiving find it soon. 

This wish relates to a really huge number of people. According to estimates I’ve seen, about 35 million people have Mayflower ancestry from one or more of the dozens of Mayflower Pilgrims. That’s about one in ten living Americans, and I’m betting that most of them do not yet know. You may be one of them. 

To help the discovery process along, we have just updated a number of our Mayflower ebooks, as well as many of our other ebook titles, from the new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition. These ebooks are like Fodor’s guides to ancestral history, leading you to the interesting people and places you should visit when you go there. 

Happy Thanksgiving from the folks at the Family Forest® Project.

The new Family Forest® National Treasure Edition comes with a new beginning. It’s visual. Instead of opening to a boring list of names, it opens to a colorful chart.

It is an hourglass chart, with ancestors to the left and descendants to the right, and the person it centers on is Henrietta Marie Morse Chamberlain, Mrs. King Ranch. Her husband founded the world famous King Ranch of Texas, then passed away rather early, leaving her in charge for 40 years. 

When you right-click on any person in a chart you will be presented with a list of options that will let you move forward or backward in time from that person, look for additional facts about that person, ancestors, descendants, check sources, dates, etc. 

From that opening chart it is possible to zigzag through thousands of years of generation-by-generation family ties to reach Monticello, The White House, Bunker Hill, Hollywood, the Mayflower, the Alamo, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the moon landing, ancient Rome, The Bible, etc., etc., etc. In short, many of the key people, places, and events in human history. 

At the top of the screen in the National Treasure on the right are two pull-down menus. These will give you a wealth of information. 

The Help menu will show how to use Progeny’s software, create charts and reports and print. A video tutorial is available online from Progeny Genealogy. 

The National Treasure Info pull-down menu will explain how to navigate and search for nuggets of discovery. Please follow your curiosity in the Family Forest® for the delight and enrichment of you and your family.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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!