An Important Message and Lesson

I just read a short preface in a book that was written more than a century ago. If you have any interest in discovering more of your ancestors, it is valuable for you to read it.

It illuminates how some of our ancestors were thinking long before we were born, and more importanly, it reveals a secret that genealogy big business does not want you to know.

In 1894 Guy Scoby Rix began a valuable 20-year genealogy research project that includes parts of the ancestry of probably more than one million living people. From Concord, NH in 1905, he wrote the preface to his work. It reveals his character, his intentions, and his commitment to accuracy.

Over the centuries there have been thousands of people like Mr. Rix who have published similar works on different families. Isn’t it much smarter to find out what knowledge is contained in those works, before spending tedious efforts sifting through raw unfiltered data?

The next time someone suggests that the first place for you to begin searching for your ancestors is in the raw data that hundreds or thousands of oftentimes very qualified people have been combing through for decades if not centuries, ask them, why?

Isn’t it best to find out first what the experts have already discovered? Why use any of your valuable research time to search for what’s already been found?

Naturally, I strongly recommend that the best starting point for ancestral history is our high quality tour guide service (the primary Family Forest® or some of it’s  hundreds of secondary publications.

Ancestral Movie Premiers

I just discovered that one of my favorite ancestral mothers is being portrayed in Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood. 

It’s exciting to see someone portrayed at the movies who documented human history says is one of your own ancestors. It’s a much more powerful attraction than just seeing one’s cousins acting in the movies. Maybe because distant cousins appear so frequently, while portrayals of actual ancestors only happen occasionally. 

From personal experience, one seems to naturally develop an affinity for a Hollywood star who has portrayed one’s own ancestor. For me, the top four so far are Katharine Hepburn (who also portrayed President Obama’s ancestor and is mentioned in the new Hawaii 24/7 article about him, Peter O’Toole, Charlton Heston, and Sophia Loren. 

I’m having a lot of fun with our Family Forest® Project while Networking Family History with Hollywood™, and I’m looking forward to seeing a new Hollywood blockbuster visually illustrating our digital system of family links. 

Most people who read this posting have ancestral pathways that lead directly to one or more characters in Robin Hood.

One of my favorite ancestral mothers

Maybe it’s because she was the first of my ancestors I saw portrayed in a movie (The Lion in Winter), and maybe it’s because she was portrayed by one of Hollywood’s most beloved icons (Katharine Hepburn), but at or very near the top of the list of my favorite ancestral mothers is Eleanor of Aquitaine. 

She was married to a king of France and a king of England, and was the mother of at least ten children, including two of history’s most remembered kings, Richard the Lionhearted, and King John who signed the Magna Charta. 

Eleanor is a very key gateway ancestor. Her ancestral pathways lead back thousands of years to and through exciting ancient worlds, some of which are already being re-created in 3-D virtual environments.

She is probably an ancestral mother of everyone who reads this. You can see Eleanor’s Ancestors-at-a-glance™ here. 

Moms have been making it all possible since before recorded history, and that’s why we are proud to emphasize them so strongly in the National Treasure. Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Brooke Shields on Who Do You Think You Are

Thank you cousin Brooke. This was my favorite episode yet. And it was just like an infomercial for the Family Forest® Project, as those of you who explore the Family Forest® already know. 

If you liked this show, you’ll love the Family Forest® National Treasure Edition. It continues on well beyond where the show leaves off. 

In fact, if you click on Brooke in the National Treasure and ask for a 50-generation ancestor view, you will get a chart with 760,723 boxes filled in. Not only will you see many more kings and Saints on the chart, you will also see at least one Pope. 

As impressed as Brooke seemed when she discovered that her ancestor was the official banker to the Vatican, I hope she will be delighted to discover that another of her ancestors actually ran the Vatican. 

My favorite quote from this episode was when Brooke said “Being able to find your place in the grand scheme of things, there’s something empowering about it.” That sums up exactly what we are delivering to customers, personal empowerment, by showing the one and only place our individual ancestors fit in the unfolding of history. 

Many of Brooke’s ancestral pathways, including the one through King Henry IV of France, lead to Rome. 

Potential celebrity avatars for the Rome game, those who already link to ancient Rome through generation-by-generation ancestral pathways in the Family Forest®, are so numerous that they will be a dime-a-dozen in the virtual world. But the celebrity hostess avatar to the game, someone whose own ancestors lived in the Emperor’s Palace, could be omnipresent in the game. 

If you know Brooke’s agent, please pass along this blog. He or she will be glad you alerted them to the celebrity hostess avatar opportunity, and will be in a much better position to land Brooke a rewarding role portraying one of her own ancestors, as her cousin Katharine Hepburn has already done.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Big Picture Story from the Big Island

A new story just appeared, and we’re pleased that it doesn’t misleadingly try to squeeze our exciting leading-edge digital project into the genealogy pigeon-hole.

 

We do like stories that highlight some of the surprising family ties we’ve networked between famous people such as Brad Pitt and President Obama, and the Family Forest® does perform some amazing genealogy feats for everyday people that no other genealogy resource can, but the real picture of our digital project is so much bigger.

 

The Family Forest® Project is about so many more exciting possibilities than just plain vanilla genealogy, and the new story points to some of them.

 

Please continue to stay tuned here for enriching previews of the future of your own past.