When Cora becomes bored with my genealogical obsession, she often fantasizes she's descended from royalty. I tell her it's fortunate we aren't descended from any kings or queens, or even Elvis. What a boring life - all that money, all that need for security and to present oneself in a proper manner?

?Cora still shakes her head and wonders what it would be like to wear silk and jewels, surrounded by vast crowds screaming for her attention. But, she's slowly realizing royalty and riches are few and far between, and she - like millions of other Americans - have slipped past inherited islands of the well-to-do to land on shores of solid uncertainty.

The Welsh have a saying: "Anniddig heb drig, heb dras." The translation boils down to "Unhappy is one without land, without lineage." In our case lineage will have to suffice, as we definitely don't own land. After many hours researching Cora's past, she and I both recognize life in America is a mixture of blessings, surprises, struggles, and many interesting stories.

Cora recently learned about ancestors from Germany. Paulus Sheffer, his wife, and about 180 other souls arrived in Philadelphia in 1733 on the Pennsylvania Merchant. They were but a tiny speck in a horde of German Protestants fleeing the persecution of Louis XIV of France. The newly arrived couple didn't sport riches, but they managed to make their way to central Virginia to settle farmland. After a generation, one of their grandsons continued to make his wealth in farming about the same time the NYSE developed under a buttonwood tree in lower Manhattan (1792).

Another relative arrived on Virginia soil about 1720. Edward Eanes, an honorable man and hard worker, married the daughter of a landowner, and fathered many descendents who also owned and worked farmland throughout Virginia.

Understand at this point that America didn't exist as a separate entity. We were still under the Crown, and England wanted the commodities we could produce for them. The royalty across the big pond were very interested in our tobacco, rice, wood, cotton, and anything else people could make or find and ship back to England (including Pocahontas).

Folks had already come and gone from these shores, and the stories they carried back to England weren't pretty. They talked of swamps, mosquitoes, disease, raids by unfriendly natives, and general isolation. Plus, the women weren't very happy with the fashions and the mud.

To overcome this obstacle, England had three plans: One was to offer fifty acres in Virginia for "adventure" to whoever would pay their own way to America. Several profiteers saw the advantage of taking hundreds of men from the streets of London and sponsoring their passage as indentured servants, earning fifty acres for each man transported. Men traveled from many countries to London just for the opportunity of servitude. Sometimes they worked off their service and found ways to purchase their own shares of land. If they were fortunate, they'd marry a landowner's daughter like Cora's ninth great-grandfather did.

You thought England shipped petty thieves only to Australia, didn't you? Not. England's other opportunity for expansion was to ship handkerchief stealers to America to work the land. The third great plan was to ship people from other countries who were persecuted by various governments and churches. These folks could work land for the Crown as well as any petty thief.

America had to extricate herself from England's taxations and settle the Native Americans down before the stock exchanges could develop. Most Native Americans weren't thrilled with our encroachment on their soil. Some of them weren't violent so much as downright mischievous about how they bothered our distant relatives.

Some of Cora's ancestors were French Huguenots who arrived in Virginia via England - more escapees from religious persecution in the late 1600s. England planted the Huguenots on Virginia soil belonging - by all rights - to the Monacan tribe. As the French tried to grow their gardens, the Monacans would steal in at night and uproot everything. Eventually, these French had to ask for England's assistance as the Monacans were slowly starving the immigrants. *

The Crown began to demand more money from our American ancestors to help them protect themselves from the ravages of this new land. By 1765 most of the colonists had it up to here, and they spent the next year fighting for their independence. They spent the next twenty years fighting to keep that independence. Edward Eanes lost his son Josiah at Valley Forge after that first Independence Day, 1776, and he would lose many more descendants, who would fight many more wars for this country.

For their bravery in fighting the latter years of the Revolutionary War, colonial men were offered bounty land "out west" (meaning Illinois) by the newly established American government. Some fought and traded the land they were given. Some fought and forgot to ask for the land. Some fought and couldn't remember their officer's name, so they were denied land. Many, like Josiah Eanes, fought and died.

Communication was slim, and overland transportation was by horse (Remember Paul Revere?) or riverboat. Not much time for speculation, but seeds for future investments were planted.

For the stock exchange to survive, it had to stay in Manhattan. The major banks at that time were situated along the coast of the thirteen colonies, mostly New York, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston, and Savannah. New York State had the advantage of canals and vocal warning systems via horsemen and chains of people who would shout numbers emanating from the exchange to other people over the hills and down the valleys of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, and back to the shores of Manhattan.

"Backlanders" and southerners didn't have the investment opportunities provided to their northern city-dwelling neighbors. Time and distance were factors, and the delay would cost them more money than they could make. The country folks struggled to increase the number of canals and roads in these areas to enable their survival and to increase their own investment opportunities.

Stay with us next week as we tackle the war of 1812, the rise and fall of pudlers, and the introduction of brokers.

Until Then,
Linda Goin

* In the summer of 2001, Cora and I met Chief Kenneth of the Monacan Nation in Rockbridge County, VA (Natural Bridge area). He's an interesting man, and a great leader of his people. His people were recently recognized - finally - as the Monacan Nation by the State of Virginia.