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Friday, January 29, 2010

Faces of America: DNA

by Janet Crain

Fire up the VCR, DVD recorder or Tivo for this series set to air beginning February 10, 2010. It sounds to be very interesting.




Famous 'Faces' explored with Henry Louis Gates

Gatesx-blog200 Kicking off February 10, Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. investigates the family history and DNA-tested ancestry of a dozen Americans: Elizabeth Alexander, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Louise Erdrich, Malcolm Gladwell, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Queen Noor, Dr. Oz, Eva Longoria, Meryl Streep and Kristi Yamaguchi (pictured with Gates).

How many of the revelations were a surprise to Yamaguchi? "90 percent of it I didn't know...A lot is revealed."

She might have learned even more, but in Japan, where her grandparents are from, records are destroyed 75 years after the person's death. There were no such problems for Eva Longoria, whose American history can be traced to her family's arrival here in 1603; Yo-Yo Ma, who is presented with a document that goes back to 1217; or Queen Noor, whose family records go back to 476 AD.

Who will he do next? He doesn't know, but Gates thinks Sarah Palin would be fun. "Rogue DNA."

http://blogs.usatoday.com/livefrom/2010/01/faces-explored.html

Genetic Genealogy on Faces of America

Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. airs on Wednesdays, February 10 – March 3, 2010 from 8-9 p.m. ET on PBS.

Eva Longoria, Meryl Streep, Mario Batali, Stephen Colbert, Malcolm Gladwell, Yo-Yo Ma, Mike Nichols, Kristi Yamaguchi, Elizabeth Alexander, Queen Noor and Louise Erdrich have all submitted DNA tests for a new PBS television series FACES OF AMERICA.\

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/

http://www.eyeondna.com/2010/01/16/genetic-genealogy-on-faces-of-america/

Watch the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig_ji5vctyY&feature=player_embedded#


Become a Facebook Fan
http://www.facebook.com/FacesOfAmerica?v=app_7146470109#/FacesOfAmerica?v=wall



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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Lost Spanish colony may be found


Pottery in St. Augustine may provide clues

Posted: January 19, 2010 - 12:12am

Three years after St. Augustine was founded, Alvara de Mendana, nephew of the governor of Peru, set out with two ships and 150 soldiers and sailed west to find gold and a new trade route to China.

Mendana's 1568 voyage found nothing, so he returned to Peru.

But a relentless lust for gold pushed the Spanish to dispatch more colonizing fleets. And one founded a colony somewhere in the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia.

No one knows its exact location or why the colony disappeared, but Martin Gibbs of the University of Sydney's Department of Archaeology has done extensive research and thinks he has a few clues. He came to St. Augustine last week to look for some clues in possible similar objects.

For 27 years after Mendana's first voyage, the Spanish remained obsessed by an Inca legend of an island.

http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2010-01-19/lost-spanish-colony-may-be-found

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Saturday, January 16, 2010

Lumbees welcome new tribal chairman

Early Lumbee School

Published: 06:53 AM, Fri Jan 15, 2010
Lumbees welcome new tribal chairman

"It is with great pleasure that I accept this noble position," Swett said during his inauguration speech. "It is a responsibility that I take seriously, and one that I will pour my heart and soul into ... because it concerns you."

Approximately 500 to 600 people attended the ceremony, which was held at the Southeastern North Carolina Agricultural Center in Lumberton.

Swett replaces Jimmy Goins as tribal chairman, who served six years as the leader of the 50,000-person tribe. Goins was barred by the tribe's term limits from seeking re-election.

In addition to Swett, newly elected Lumbee Tribal Council members Robert Earl Chavis, Terry Collins and Homer Fields were sworn in, as well as re-elected council members Audrey Hunt, Helen Locklear, Kernice Locklear and James Taft Smith.

Tribal Supreme Court Justice Gary Locklear swore them in. Swett used his father's Bible and momentarily choked up with emotion during the ceremony.

As Swett's position is analogous to that of president or governor, the 21-person Tribal Council is the tribe's legislature. All serve three-year terms.

http://www.fayobserver.com/Articles/2010/01/15/968523


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Friday, January 15, 2010

First Indentured Servants in the New World?

by Janet Crain

By all accounts Fort St. George, in present day Maine, should have succeeded. It was well financed and expertly planned.Established in 1607, it was intended to contain thick battlements, great crenellated gates, several mansions, a church, fifty other buildings, and a walled garden. A dozen cannon pointed toward the sea.

The fort was the brainchild of Sir John Popham, one of the most important and powerful men in England during Queen Elizabeth I's reign. He intended to solve one of England's biggest problem; a huge surplus population of destitute people with no means of support.

Convinced this situation was the primary cause of crime, Sir Popham wanted to sweep up the "dregs" of England and put them to work in the new world earning their keep.


At this time tinkers, vagabonds, gypsies, and wandering artists and actors were considered as prime candidates for this "benefit" to be bestowed upon them, along with felons, and prostitutes, pickpockets and highway men.

Fort St. George was built entirely with enforced transported labor. Later called indentured servitude, this system is American history's best kept secret. Later the European servants were joined by Africans and Indians. There was no difference in their treatment or status. Some had kind masters, many had harsh cruel masters. Only after Bacon's rebellion would the races be treated differently.

Even Thomas Jefferson was deluded when he wrote that only about 2,000 convicts were transported to America and they were mostly sickly men who soon died and left no descendants. In truth there many many more. Add to them those transported for trivial reasons, those sold into servitude by captors, masters or themselves and the unknown number dumped here by Cromwell and it's clear that most of us have these people numbered among our ancestors. Rather than deny them, we should celebrate their will to survive and honor them.

Everything we learn about Jamestown and Fort St. George sheds light on the First Colony at Roanoke. This map is therefore of great interest. The men who planned these settlements, sailed the ships, explored our shores and inland areas were contemporaries. Back in England they knew each other well. They may have schemed and plotted against each other in the Elizabethan Court and later that of King James, but they were cut from the same cloth. And their motives were similar. It was not altruism that brought about this new nation.



Fort St. George (Popham Colony)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 / 43.7532; -69.7884
John Hunt's map

Fort St. George, named for the patron saint of England, was built in 1607 by Popham Colony near Sabino Head, ten miles/15 kilometres south of what is now Bath, Maine, United States. It was abandoned after a year of occupation and is now an archaeological site. [1] [2]

John Hunt, a draughtsman present at the fort when it was built, drew a map showing[3] a star-shaped fort including ditches and ramparts, a storehouse, a chapel and more than fifteen structures. It contained nine guns that ranged in size from demi-culverin to falcon. As a result of espionage by the Spanish ambassador to London, Pedro de Zuniga, the map was passed to King Philip III of Spain, in 1608.[4] It was found in 1888 in a Spanish archive. [5] It is unique as the only plan of an initial English settlement in the Americas known to survive.

Related:

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-misfortune-of-indentured-servants.html


http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition.html

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-2.html

http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-3.html


http://historical-melungeons.blogspot.com/2008/07/persons-of-mean-and-vile-condition-pt-4.html



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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Mysterious Jamestown Tablet an American Rosetta Stone?

A conservator digitally isolated inscriptions (right) on the 17th-century Jamestown tablet (left)for National Geographic magazine

January 13, 2010

With the help of enhanced imagery and an expert in Elizabethan script, archaeologists are beginning to unravel the meaning of mysterious text and images etched into a rare 400-year-old slate tablet discovered this past summer at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Digitally enhanced images of the slate are helping to isolate inscriptions and illuminate fine details on the slate—the first with extensive inscriptions discovered at any early American colonial site, said William Kelso, director of research and interpretation at the 17th-century Historic Jamestowne site (Jamestown map).

(Explore an interactive guide to colonial Jamestown.)

Cont.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100113-jamestown-tablet-slate-american-rosetta-stone/&ct=ga&cd=e7EIwba_pzY&usg=AFQjCNHsRsAywBIF2XEj2Tgmvwt7OvzdWA



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Thursday, January 7, 2010

Cherokee Nation speakers at the Funk Heritage Center in Georgia

This event sounds like a not to be missed event for anyone who can possibly attend.

The following is from an email sent out by Michael Martinez, director of the Reinhardt College Hill Freeman Library and Spruill Learning Center in Waleska, GA. These events are part of the year-long series of events at the college based on the indigenous peoples of North America:

Gene Norris, Robert Lewis, and Gina Burnett will be arriving in Waleska Wednesday evening, Jan. 13 and returning to Oklahoma on Sat the 16th. On Thursday, Jan 14, Mr. Lewis and Ms. Burnett will speak in the library on the third floor at 1 p.m. Mr. Norris will speak that evening at the Funk Heritage Center at 7 p.m. These events are free, open to the public, and no reservations are required. (Also please note that you can become a fan of the Funk Heritage Center on Facebook.)

http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Waleska-GA/Funk-Heritage-Center/149287297310?ref=search&sid=1033419362.1549261626..1


Funk Heritage Center Gene Norris will speak in the Estelle Bennett Hughes Theater. He is a Board certified genealogist specifically trained in tracing Cherokee ancestry. He is the senior genealogist with the Cherokee National Historical Society, Inc. He is also a member of the Board of Certification for Genealogists in Washington, DC, t...he Cherokee National Historical Society, Inc., the Goingsnake District Heritage Association, the National Genealogical Society, Member of the Board of the Oklahoma Chapter of the National Trail of Tears Association, the Cherokee-Moravian Historical Association and the Carroll County Historical and Genealogical Society, Inc. He has actively been involved in genealogical research for twenty-three years and has been specifically concentrating on Cherokee genealogy since 1994.






More here:

http://trailofthetrail.blogspot.com/2010/01/cherokee-nation-speakers-at-funk.html


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Monday, January 4, 2010

White Seed, new book about the Lost Colony



I am reading an exciting new book, White Seed, about the Lost Colony. It looks like it will be really good.

I will report back with a review on this book.






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