The Messy Lives of Book People

 

I needed a very mindless book for the first days home from total knee replacement.  And this fit the bill.  I did finish the book, but it was not my favorite.  The heroine is appealing.  The rest of the characters are of interest.  But the story line is a bit "trumped up"

Undaunted Courage

 On my way home from the Cheer competition today in Parkersburg, I thought about the fact that I had crossed the Ohio River three times.  And the fact that Paige Cruz is going to speak to us this coming Saturday about the Lewis and Clark Expedition 

The first chapters are a biography of Merriweather Lewis.  He was a man from the gentry.  His father was a Revolutionary war hero who not only bought his own uniform but also paid for his own keep as a contribution to the cause.  Unfortunately his father died young after a visit home as he prepared to return to the Revolutionary War arena.  His horse drowned while trying to cross a river and he made it back home totally wet and cold and died of pneumonia soon after.

His early years were spent on a plantation that according to this book looked to the west through Rockfish gap on the east side of the Blue Ridge mountains in Albemarle County.  It is very interesting to me as my Morrison family lived in the general area.  Although the Morrisons had moved to Pittsylvania County by the time Merriweather Lewis was born.  But the author points out that the place of birth and early years of Meerriweathre Lewis was influenced by the fact that his home faced to the west the frontier and to the east with the privileges of education and gentility and that Lewis loved both.

In the first few chapters William Clark is named only briefly as the two men met while serving in the army of the young United States.  

The Lost book of Eleanor Dare

From the Amazon review:  What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age.

I was not so captivated by the book that I read it quickly.  Probably my favorite part of the book was a fictional story of what happened to Eleanor Dare and her child, Virginia.  The author chooses to have her meet a man who is a spy for the English in St Augustine which is a Spanish settlement in the time of Eleanor's life.  He is a surgeon and is very likable.  They travel down the coast and marry once they reach St. Augustine.  The couple die in an epidemic but Virginia survives and is the second generation down from Eleanor.

 

Pendle Water/ The Kendal Sparrow

 I don't usually write about a book before I have started reading a book.  However, I just bought a paperback book on Amazon called the Kendal Sparrow

Barbara sent news of her book via the Bush River Quakers facebook site.  It is a private site for those of 

us who research the families living in the area before and during the Revolutionary War.  By chance 

my own research has moved to the general area in which this novel takes place.  The midlands of England 

in the 1600s.  I have a Quaker Elliott family that would have been living in the general area as well as 

at least one non-quaker family.  It is of great interest to me.  

As a bit of back ground before the book arrives, I have googled Pendle Water.  

Using the above close up, I find the general area on a larger map below.

It is possible that our Elliott family may have been from just northwest of Nottingham and Derby.  And 

From Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer: (page 438)

"The Quaker founders of Pennsylvania and West Jersey came from every part of England.  But one region stood out above the rest.  The Friends' migration drew heavily upon the North Midlands, and especially the counties of Cheshire, Lancaster, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  In a list of English immigrants who arrived at Philadelphia between the years 1682 and 1687, more than 80 percent came from these five contiguous counties."

and

"On both banks of the Delaware River, these Quaker immigrants distributed themselves in small settlements according to their places of origin in Britain.  Country Quakers from Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire settled mainly in Chester and Bucks Counties.  "the farmers amoung them poverty stricken dalesmen from the moors of northern England." writes Frederick Tolles, "headed straight for the rich uplands of Bucks and Chester"  The lands around Trenton were occupied by emigrants from the Peak District of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  London Quakers preferred the city and county of Philadelphia.  Emigrants from Bristol founded a town of the same name on the Delaware River.  Dublin Quakers occupied  Newton, West Jersey.  Emigrants from, Wales colonized the "Welsh Tract" west of the Schuylkill River"

My research on my Elliott family led me to making this my next book to read.  The book received excellent reviews.  

Earlier in the week, I sent the following information to our group that are matches on yDNA.  We believe this to be the family group connected to John and Sarah Elliott who took a certificate with them to Nottingham MM in 1722 but were accepted by New Garden MM. 

But the BIG thing is that when Jeff’s results came back as a match to us at 111 markers, I quit looking at much of what I had looked at and am now concentrating on the idea that the common ancestor for Jeff Houghton and for our Elliott line is a man who was living in the area of the North Midlands of England.  The Book Albion’s seed says:

From Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer: (page 438)

"The Quaker founders of Pennsylvania and West Jersey came from every part of England.  But one region stood out above the rest.  The Friends' migration drew heavily upon the North Midlands, and especially the counties of Cheshire, Lancaster, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  In a list of English immigrants who arrived at Philadelphia between the years 1682 and 1687, more than 80 percent came from these five contiguous counties."

and

"On both banks of the Delaware River, these Quaker immigrants distributed themselves in small settlements according to their places of origin in Britain.  Country Quakers from Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire settled mainly in Chester and Bucks Counties.  "the farmers amoung them poverty stricken dalesmen from the moors of northern England." writes Frederick Tolles, "headed straight for the rich uplands of Bucks and Chester"  The lands around Trenton were occupied by emigrants from the Peak District of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.  London Quakers preferred the city and county of Philadelphia.  Emigrants from Bristol founded a town of the same name on the Delaware River.  Dublin Quakers occupied  Newton, West Jersey.  Emigrants from, Wales colonized the "Welsh Tract" west of the Schuylkill River"

So what led me to make this book my next read?  It was Jeff's comment that I add below:

Now the shock horror news of the Elliot's, they are bad, bad Vikings who came over with William and maybe a connection to the Britons of old.(Brittany for 500 years. ) Right history lessons and NOT Scottish by origin LOL

and the link that he sent to read:

https://selectsurnames.com/elliott/

These put the idea that perhaps our Elliott line did indeed come with the Norman Invasion.

 The author is telling the story of how Edward the confessor had come to power as King of England.

So the author is setting the scene and he says that the Anglo-Saxons had driven the Celts to the west and north,  And they had founded the kingdoms shown below.  The author does not mention Wales, so I am not clear about if this was an Anglo-Saxon area.  But with the coming of the Vikings, First Northumbria fell to the viking and then Mercia and East Anglia.  But the kingdom of Wessex remained and was ruled by Alfred the Great.  And then later by son and grandson.  They successfully fended against the Vikings.  They began adding land to the north until they were successful in driving out the Vikings from North in York.  Alfred did not set himself as a conqueror.  He stressed their common chronicle.  It was written in the every day language:  Land of Angles....Engleland.

He was a direct descendant of Alfred the great.  By the time of Edward's birth the Vikings had returned and harried, burned, slew as they moved into the area.

And the author explains that Normandy comes from the land of the North Men who moved into the area in:

The Normans (from the Latin Normanni and Old Norse for "north men") were ethnic Scandinavian Vikings who settled in northwest France in the early 9th century AD. They controlled the region known as Normandy until the mid 13th century.

 

Vikings by Neil Oliver

 After many hours of listening to this book and working on a blog post, I ran into the problem that the post would bleed into the blog posts that followed it.  I do not know how to fix this problem,....and it is stopping me from making progress.  So I am going to keep the first part of this blog post a draft and start a new post so I can continue to work on the project.  I have hope this will work.  I can read what I have written so far by reading the draft,.  I could also send the draft to anyone who might want to read it..  Let me know if you want to see it for yourself.

So now I am starting this second part of the blog post at Chapter 7.  First we heard about a funeral in which the slave girl was readied and then gang raped and then killed to accompany her master when the boat was burned.  They did not burn her alive.  

Joe who is a buddy said that he felt I had interpreted the incident described above not in the same way the he had read the incident.  So I am adding his explanation of his interpretation from another account below:

Marsha, I haven't read that particular book but I do know of the funeral that you are referring to. IIRC it was originally recorded by the Arabic writer Ibn Butta who wrote about his travels to central Europe and to Russia in the 14th century. But to get to the point what you refer to as a "gang rape" was nothing of the sort. She had sex with four men prior to be humanely killed and sacrificed along with a dead Viking king. Ibn reported that it was a GREAT honor for her and something that she did very willingly.

Ibn explained that the men having sex with her wasn't about sex but was a display of their love for the deceased and that she was meant to carry their love to him in the next world. So she was in effect a Divine messenger for the Vikings.  It's a very odd notion by our standards! 

Joe also share with me the information about where this account can be read:

t was actually Ibn Fadlan who traveled into Europe and described the Vikings and that Viking funeral.   <https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ibn-fadlan-arab-among-vikings-russia

 

Next the author focused on the difference between the Vikings in the west and those who traveled east.  At this time the Vikings who had come down the German rivers had set up rule in Kiev.  And their ruler wanted to know which religion was best. Those exploring this idea found no joy in the Jewish religion nor in the Islam religion.  But the group that visited Constantinople were awestruck by the Christian religion that was in place in that city.  Constantinople was at the time of the coming of the Vikings the capital of the Byzantine Empire.  There was nothing like it...nothing to compare....The city was at that tine 500 years old.  It was the ruler Vladimir who sent out emissaries to report back to him which of the three religions was worthy.  By 988 the emissaries viewed Hagia Sophia: 

The Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian in the 6th century, was the centre of religious life in the Eastern Orthodox world. It was by far the largest and most splendid religious edifice in all of Christendom. According to The Russian Primary Chronicle (a work of history compiled in Kiev in the 12th century), the envoys of the Kievan prince Vladimir, who visited it in 987, reported: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth.” 

 That same year he had the Pagan gods torn down and thrown into the river....then had all of his people were led into the river to become Christians.

The next interesting fact the author suggests is that Kiev was important because it was on the river that led to the black sea....and hence to Constantinople.

The next interesting information is that St Petersburg was an area settled by the Swedes! It was Swedish until the 1700s.

And then back to the Vikings who traveled west,  The suggestion is that a man might spend the spring sowing his crops and then make his spring trip to plunder....getting home mid summer to harvest.  After harvest he would make a fall trip to plunder getting home early winter.  

Also there is information about the fact that the areas that had been under Roman rule were Christian.  But Ireland was later in being converted.  It was not until the 5th C that St Patrick and others converted the Irish,  And care was taken to incorporate old holidays and holy days so that the religion did not totally seem too unfamiliar.  And that the early Irish churchmen had families of their own.  Rome did not like this!  It meant that these churchmen had children to leave their money and goods to,,,Rome wanted the men of the church to send all money and goods to the mother church!

Ok....For some reason I decided to google if Rowland was Viking.  And I found the name could have origins in many cultures.  But the fact of most interest in the google search is this:

The name Roland/ Orlando/ Rolando symbolized all the strength and heroic, gallant, fighting defenders of the "faith" that a proud father could bestow on his son.It is certain that the Roland/Orlando version of the name entered England on, or shortly after 1066 AD,and the Norman conquest of England.I'm sure that the proud Frank/Viking followers of William the Conqueror used the name commonly.

It must be remembered that the Franks were not "French", as we now consider them. The Franks were a mixture of pre-Gallic, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic people, and the Normans were a mixture of Viking / Scandinavian / Danish people who, after invading and settling the Normandy region of France, and adopting the French court language as their own, then intermarried with the local Franks etc., before attacking and defeating the army of the Dane, Angle, Saxon, Jute, Briton, Celtic, Roman defenders of England.

Books that I read Winter 2021-22 and into the spring

I began the book on the Vikings that is the next blog post in July 2022.  I had trouble with the formatting.  In the process of trying to fix that problem I erased the following blog posts about the following books:

The Hearth and the Eagle, The last Enchantment, the Hollow Hills and the Crystal Cave.

The Hearth and the Eagle was by Anya Seton.  

This was not a page turner, but I recommend it to anyone!  It s a wonderful book about how a home can be

a shelter from the world for many generations.

The other three books are by Mary Stewart.  I read them quickly one after the other.  They are her King Arthur series.  I do not believe that I read the 4th book:  The Wicked Day

Here are a few of the words that I saved from these blog posts:

Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess, Myridden Emrys -- or as he would later be known, Merlin -- leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before the High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon . . . and the conception of Arthur -- king for once and always.

It is Christmas season and I am looking for entertainment.  This seems to be just the ticket.  I was taken tonight by the fact that Merlin is born to a Welsh princess.  I have not yet done my homework on my Welsh ancestors.  I am definitely interested in that part of the world.

I finished the book on January 1st.  I did not love the craziness of the end of the book...but I immediately started the next book in the series.  It is very entertaining.  I recommend googling who people are when one gets confused.  Because the story is about King Arthur one gets good answers about who each person is.  

I should have explained that in Mary Stewart's book, Merlin finds out that his father is Ambrosius who is the high king.  So Merlin is a prince.  He is the son of a Princess and also the son of high King.  After the death of Ambrosius, the rule goes to the brother of Ambrosius:  Uther.  And it is Uther who is the father of Arthur.  A little research shows that none of this is considered fact:

Whether Ambrosius was a king of the Britons, a war leader against the Saxons, a Briton, a Roman, all of the above or none of the above, isn't known for sure outside the legends and tales about him.

Some have thought that Ambrosius and Arthur are really one and the same, others that he was Arthur's uncle. The truth is probably that Ambrosius Aurelianus was a genuine, heroic, fifth century, Romano-British war leader, some of whose own exploits have been applied to the legend of Arthur.

  from:  https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/BritishAmbrosiusAurelianus01.htm

Other quick research shows King Arthur 

Although the themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend varied widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version, Geoffrey's version of events often served as the starting point for later stories. Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon.

wikipedia says:  The historical basis for King Arthur has been long debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), saw Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century.

The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.^[7]

The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon.

So we can place King Arthur (if he is real) from about 480 until this date of death.