Woman-Centered Genealogy

Before Women’s History Month ends, please let me remind you that I believe the Family Forest® Project is the most woman-centered genealogy resource available, intentionally by design. 

There was a telling scene in the excellent Faces of America program where Meryl Streep tells Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that basically, she is not nearly as interested in the lives of her male ancestors as she is in the women who stood with them. 

Wow, that sums up the direction I have been steering the Family Forest® Project in for 15 years. Wouldn’t cousin Meryl be the perfect celebrity spokesperson we need? 

Countless choices appear before me each day as I perform my tour-guide service to of strategically growing the amazingly interconnected digital system of links we call the Family Forest®. I spend my days journeying through the nooks and crannies of thousands of years of human history and I leave a well-marked trail of everywhere I visit. The problem is that time does not allow me to enter nearly as much as I see. 

So when faced with decisions about the most important parts I should tell you about, I have almost always chosen to follow the lines of the mothers and daughters. This deliberate intention consistently applied over the last 15 years has grown the Family Forest® into the most woman-centered genealogy resource available. 

A number of examples of Family Forest® woman-centered genealogy can be downloaded free. They include some well-known and currently topical women such as Amelia Earhart, Julia Child, Sarah Jessica Parker, Meryl Streep, Brooke Shields, and Sarah Palin.

Ancestor of all the Irish

There is a fascinating monumental account of the origin of the Irish people which was written in the 1800’s. Genealogical Publishing Company calls it “the magnum opus of Irish Genealogy.” 

What happens when the essence of this enormous work is intelligently digitally indexed in lineage-linked format? Actually, never-before-seen views of thousands of years of Irish ancestry appear. 

One of them is the 916-page “The Family Forest® Descendants of Milesius of Spain for 84 Generations” eBook which has just gone live on Google Book Search. 

Milesius is said to be the ancestor of all Irish people, and this book presents in standard genealogical format his generation-by-generation descendants leading into Hollywood movies and standard history books. 

Much more exciting are the enormous charts that can be summoned from the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition. If you click on Milesius (PIN 5897690) and request a 110-generation descendant view, you can visually explore the ancestral pathways leading to this one man from more than 200 hundred thousand of his descendants, a number of whom you will instantly recognize. 

I feel certain that more than two billion living people have some ancestors on this chart. This includes Meryl Streep and Sarah Jessica Parker. 

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

Sarah Jessica Parker on Who Do You Think You Are?

I highly recommend this great program for everyone. It gives an excellent preview of the positive life enriching discoveries waiting to be found by each person who seeks to know about the bigger picture of where we came from. 

More importantly from a Family Forest® perspective, if you liked this show, you’ll love the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition. It picks up where the show leaves off. 

For instance, consider just one of the intersections in Sarah Jessica Parker’s ancestry which was discussed in the program. His name is Samuel Elwell and he is PIN 327364 in the National Treasure. 

Not only is he one of Sarah Jessica Parker’s ancestors, but according to the  recorded history already mapped out in the National Treasure, he is one of the 5^th-great-grandfathers of Norman Rockwell. 

As much as Sarah Jessica Parker seemed to enjoy the feeling of being American that she gained from her ancestral discoveries, she should be elated to know that she shares Elwell ancestors with the person who personified Americans for decades, Norman Rockwell. 

A much bigger surprise still awaits Sarah Jessica Parker and her Mom (Will someone please let them know?). According to recorded history, the wife of their Samuel Elwell is Mary Jones, daughter of Isaac and Deborah (Clark or Clarke) Jones. 

Mary’s 20-generation ancestor view in the National Treasure pulls up a chart that anyone should be proud to claim as their own. I know, I’m speaking from personal experience, as parts of her ancestor chart I recognize as also my own. 

This one map of some of the ancestral pathways of Sarah Jessica Parker covers some extremely interesting human history that Hollywood has been making great films of for decades. These include some of her ancestors in Braveheart and The Lion in Winter, one of which was portrayed by our Oscar-winning cousin. 

Sarah Jessica Parker and her Mom can now watch a famous movie of our cousin portraying our ancestor. This is an example of why we say that the Family Forest® is Networking Family History with Hollywood.™ 

Meryl Streep on PBS

 I am really looking forward to seeing the program about Meryl Streep’s ancestry on PBS later this month. With all of the resources at their disposal, will they reveal more of Meryl’s children’s illustrious ancestral heritage than the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition?

Will their 30-generation ancestor view of Meryl fill in more than 14,304 boxes with the names of people who, according to recorded history, her children would call grandmother or grandfather (preceded by some number of “greats”)? 

Will the program take her back to one of her ancestors that Katharine Hepburn portrayed? 

Will the program be able to connect her through family ties to one of her idols she did a TCM tribute to, Bette Davis?

Will the program be able to connect her through family ties to ancestors she shares with Julia Child, one of Meryl’s distant cousins she recently portrayed in Julie and Julia? 

Will the program be able to show any of her generation-by-generation pathways leading to the Emperor’s Palace in 320 A.D. Rome? 

As Jimmy Buffett so sagely says on Banana Wind, only time will tell.

John Adams Revisited

Last night Kristine’s family and I were again absorbed in rewatching “John Adams”, until I was sidetracked with a totally mystifying question. 

Why wasn’t anyone thunderstruck with any of the amazing connections we revealed John Adams about this program two years ago? 

Were the claims too diametrically opposed to accepted common knowledge? 

Was it because the Family Forest® Nation Treasure Edition was not yet available (as it is now) to verify these connections? 

Was the point missed that these connections related personally to everyone who reads them? 

Any thoughts to demystify this mystery will be greatly appreciated.

67th Annual Golden Globe Awards

It’s happening Sunday January 17, 2010. A number of the nominees are already extensively networked in the Family Forest® to each other, to historical characters portrayed in the movies, and most importantly, to viewers in the audience. 

More of the free visually engaging Ancestors-at-a-glance™ fan charts have just been posted, and some of the stars and characters include Sigourney Weaver, Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Clint Eastwood and Georgia O’Keeffe. 

The Family Forest® is a digital Hollywood resource that picks up where IMDb leaves off in two areas. One is connecting fans through family ties to Hollywood personalities and movie characters, and the other is having content and family ties for many of IMDb’s character profiles which are now empty or very skeletal. 

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. 

Enjoy the show! 

P.S. The Family Forest® Project needs a celebrity spokesperson. Details available here.

Tudors descendants in the audience. Are you one of them?

I once read somewhere that the real purpose of reading is to trap the mind into thinking. 

Well it just happened to me while I was reading the new Family Forest® Descendants of Earl Sir Thomas Boleyn ebook. He is a man who has been portrayed by Nick Dunning in 20 episodes of Showtime’s hugely popular series The Tudors. My thinking drifted to the fans of The Tudors, and the fact that millions of them are actually watching portrayals of their own ancestors. Most of them probably haven’t made this AhHa! discovery yet, and you may quite likely be one of them. 

For instance consider just one good possibility of a person who may be one of your own ancestors. Thomas Boleyn’s genes began appearing in America at least a decade before the Mayflower arrived, at Jamestown, VA. His genes also appeared in Boston and other parts of MA in the 1600s. 

According to the ancestral pathways already networked into the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition, Thomas Boleyn’s genes have been born into many locations around the globe, including such diverse places in America such as Reidsville, NC, Jarratt, VA, Topeka, KS, Atlantic City, NJ, Red Rock and Fort Dodge, IA, Vienna Crossroads and Toledo, OH, Buffalo and Brooklyn, NY, Portland, OR, Rock Island, IL, Olympia, WA, Bryn Mawr, PA, Newburyport, MA, Houston, TX, Sulphur, OK, Morley, MO, and many more. 

Some of his famous descendants include Charles Darwin, Tim Berners-Lee, John D. Rockefeller, Howard Dean, Princess Diana and her two sons, Prince Harry and Prince William, Admiral Dennis Blair, Rachel Ward, Cary Elwes, Hilary Duff, and Skandar Keynes. Many of Thomas’ known descendants are also Pocahontas descendants. Most of his descendants are everyday people.

His royally-descended genes are known to have already spread into families with surnames of Abbott, Adams, Alexander, Allen, Ames, Anderson, Arms, Armstrong, Atkinson, Avery, Baker, Bannister, Barnard, Marnes, Barton, Batchelder, Beekman, Bell, Bennett, Bigelow, Bingham, Bishop, Blood, Bolling, Bowen, Bowers, Boyle, Bradlee, Breed, Brent, Brett, Brooks, Bryant, Buchanan, Burke, Burwell, Butler, Butts, Campbell, Carlton, Chandler, Chase, Church, Churchill, Claiborne, Clark, Clement, Cleveland, Cobb, Cocke, Coffin, Colby, Cole, Collins, Corbin, Cox, Creilly, Crump, Culbertson, Cunningham, Currier, Cushman, Dalton, Dandridge, Davis, Devereux, Dodge, Drummond, Dunlap, Dunlop, Edwards, Emery, Evans, Ferguson, Fleming, Folger, Fontaine, Fowler, Freeman, Gage, Garnsey, Gault, Goodale, Goode, Gorham, Graham, Grant, Griffin, Guest, Hale, Hall, Harrison, Haseltine, Hazeltine, Henry, Herrick, Hills, Hinckley, Hitchcock, Holloway, Hopkins, Houghton, Howard, Howe, Hunter, Huntington, Hussey, Ingalls, James, Johnson, Jones, Kennedy, Kerr, Kimball, Leavitt, Lee, Lewis, Lincoln, Lindbergh, Logan, Lott, Lynn, Macy, Marston, Mason, Mather, McCall, Merrill, Metcalf, Meyers, Miller, Moore, Morgan, Morrison, Morrow, Morse, Moses, Mott, Moulton, Muir, Newton, Oliver, O’Neill, O’Reilly, Paget, Paine, Parker, Parks, Payne, Peabody, Pelham, Perkins, Perry, Pinkham, Porter, Preston, Quincy, Raines, Rich, Rindge, Roberts, Robertson, Rockefeller, Regers, Roosevelt, Rose, Ross, Rothschild, Royce, Russell, Safford, Saltonstall, Sargent, Savage, Severance, Seymour, Shannon, Shaw, Shelden, Shepard, Singleton, Smith, Snow, Spencer, Stanton, Starbuck, Starr, Stebbins, Stetson, Stickney, Stone, Tarbox, Telford, Thompson, Thornberry, Toler, Traxler, Vail, Wade, Walden, Wall, Warfield, Warren, Washington, Waterhouse, Watkins, Watts, Wayland, Webster, Wendell, Wentworth, West, Wheeler, Wilcox, Williams, Willis, Wilson, Wingo, Winslow, Winston, Woodman, Worth, and probably thousands of additional surnames, including quite possibly yours.

Some historians believe that all of these descendants in the new Family Forest® Descendants of Earl Sir Thomas Boleyn are also descended from King Henry VIII.

There are many other named characters in The Tudors you may be descended from. We have just posted 15 free Tudors Ancestors-at-a-glance™ charts for fans of The Tudors, history buffs, and descendants. You can see them here. 

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 can easily show you.

Thanksgiving and the Mayflower

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.

National Treasure Hunt Begins in Texas

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.

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