Monday, February 6, 2012

Old Virginia and Her Neighbors


I just happen to like books by John Fiske and this one is no exception. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors has been recently reprinted by Heritage Books in two volumes. It covers the period from Sir Walter Raleigh (the other Sir Walter; if you don't get that one be reminded of my kilts) to just before the French and Indian War.

A sample of topics covered includes: Spanish colonization (did you even know the Spanish were this far north); the voyages of Francis Drake; Raleigh’s plan to found a colony; the mystery of Roanoke Island (and I bet you thought it was in North Carolina); the founding of Jamestown; slaves first introduced in Virginia (1619, indentures, not slaves, ship George, my ancestor ended up with three of the first group; a shout out to all the John Woodson cousins out there; you can call me Tub or Potato-bin, both would be right); the great Indian massacre of 1622; Tidewater Virginia; the plantations; boroughs and burgesses; higher education; William Claiborne (John Frederick Dorman has a genealogy out on this guy) and the Kent Island controversy; land grants; Jefferson; Bacon’s Rebellion; Williamsburg; Quakers; William Penn; the anti-Catholic panic of 1689; James Madison; John Mason; the Carolina frontier; Indian tribes; pirates; Scotch-Irish and German migration; and a lot of other things that are of interest to people interested in early Virginia, Marylanders who ran away to Virginia in order to continue to do one thing; breathe and how North Carolinians were really Virginians to begin with. There are also a couple of maps I like that I may put up as PDFs someday.

Available from HeritageBooks.com, Maia's Books, A Genealogy Shelf, Family Roots Publishing, Amazon and Ingram.

0788407198  9780788407192 101-F0719 - $67.00 plus tax and shipping.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, Craig, for sharing about this interesting book! And in your spare time, maybe you'll fill out much more detail about yourself -? Congratulations on your FIRST blog post! Cheers.

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  2. Huh! Now I find you're the guy of "Stump Craig" - Well done. I take back my Congratulations (I'm joking!).

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  3. I must get my hands on this book. Thanks for blogging about it. I have a Jamestown ancestor who came to Virginia on Samuel Argall's privateer ship as a gunner in 1613. He survived the massacre of 1622, and his son was involved with Bacon's Rebellion.

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