I want to express my thanks to all who are waiting for the completion of my book. I’m still plodding away on Chapter 17. I have stopped trying to estimate the time needed to finish the chapter, much less the book; all of my previous estimates have been much, much too short. I am working to finish it as quickly as I can, and will continue to give you occasional progress reports. I would rather do it well than do it fast. What I regret most is soliciting money so prematurely. I will be glad to refund anybody’s deposit who wants it, and I will still honor the promised $60.00 prepublication price. If you would like your deposit refunded, just let me know.
While I regret the time it is taking, I am pleased with the content of the chapter so far. With the help of some distinguished professional genealogists and historians, I have been able to solve some vexing problems and correct some long-standing errors in the maternal lines-in particular, the Burgin descent from Captain Thomas Carter, a prominent Virginia planter in the early 1600s, and his English ancestry. Several descents from noble and/or royal British and European families have been found. Also, I am happy to announce a Burgin descent from John Rolfe, the pioneer Jamestown tobacco farmer, and his third wife Jane Pierce (his second was Pocahontas.)
As an example of the content, here is a self-contained, twelve-page excerpt from Chapter 17. In the finished book, pages will be formatted with page numbers at the page bottoms, and “headers”, with the chapter title and the book title alternating on odd and even pages; to simplify posting online, the formatting has been eliminated for this excerpt. Endnotes have also been deleted; in the actual book, there are two pages of notes for these twelve pages of text.
This passage concerns the first Thomas Albartus Burgin, a grandson of Pioneer Ben’s brother Jesse. It also marks my first use of a more personal approach to some of the book’s content. In the first sixteen chapters, I have stuck carefully to documented, objective facts. Beginning at this point in the seventeenth, I add occasional personal notes, giving my own subjective memories of the people described, or of the family legends I have heard about them. The sample begins here.(Copyright 2007, all rights reserved)