GenChat-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [GenChat-L] Gaining A Historical Perspective On Our Ancestors
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 23:48:49 EDT

Fellow Chatters,

It's not entirely possible to learn the nitty-gritty, daily life sorts of
details about our ancestors that make our forebears come alive to us...Places
such as Plimouth Plantation, where the folks who work inside its gates adopt
the persona of real, once-living people and speak only in the accents (as best
they may be approximated) of the era, and with references no later than the
folks they portray could have had...Places such as Colonial Williamsburg and
Old Sturbridge Village, where they don't take on historic persona, but their
knowledge and the surroundings give you insights into an age you could not
know half so well any other way...Diaries and journals and letters and books -
even those not by our long-dead kin - can help bring us part of the way
there...

Too, with the Internet, we now have the means to walk a little way down the
path back into our ancestors' times...There are so many re-enacting groups,
some military, some civilian, some rural, some urban, some going back into the
days of the Greeks and the Romans, some as far back as World War II and the
Korean War and the Viet Nam War...

One to which belong deals with the antebellum period and the War Between the
States...There are many excellent Websites on that subject, and I don't claim
that ours ranks among them...Ours is quite diverse, though, and although
brand-new, is expanding its information on civilian life of the period...I'm
going to be adding to the Website information on the specifics of civilian
occupations, as well as the sorts of things that people in that age would have
known and discussed...

We'll deal with politics, of course, and religion and commerce and scandals
and lifestyles...Clothing and etiquette (we have an extensive civilian
etiquette manual on our Website)...

If you have questions or comments about that age that aren't dealt with on the
Website, please forward them to me...As I'm able, I'll try to tackle them...If
you've written articles or have information about those sorts of topics with
which we'll deal on that Website, we'd be proud to consider publishing them
there...

At any rate, I'd like to invite you to come visit our Website, if for no other
reason than because my granddaughter Elizabeth (Lizzie - now 13 months old) is
pictured on our first "Photo Album" page...Our address is:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Woods/3501/

Any comments, positive or negative, will be of great help...And perhaps some
of the subjects with which we deal there, or plan to deal with there, will
engender some conversation on Gen Chat...

Thanks so much...We look forward to having you drop in...

Chas Lee

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