Genealogy and Me --part 2

But of all the people I have met that are connected to my research none has been more interesting or more interested than the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, uncle of the Queen of England's husband. He has been described since the death of Churchill as the greatest living Englishman. Who was he, you may ask? Born a Prince of Battenberg, and the great grandson of Queen Victoria he, because of his German name, became Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1917. His father had been the head of Britain's Navy in 1914. His mother's sister was the Empress of Russia. His mother's other sister, Irene, had married the German Kaiser's brother, Heinrich, and he was hood of the German Navy. Lord Louis mode a career in the British Navy and served in it for 52 years before he retired from it. He was responsible for the invasion plans of Europe in 1944. He was made Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces in Southeast Asia and was responsible for liberating Burma, Thailand, the Malay Peninsula and what is now Indonesia, from the Japanese occupation. In 1947 the Attlee government in England sent him to India to seek the Independence of India, hoping that he might be able to do it without ending up in a blood bath while the transition of power was underway. He hoped to keep the country united but as we know it became two countries - India and Pakistan. When it was all over within a year Nehru invited Mountbatten (he had become very popular with the Indians) to become the first Governor-General of India since India chose to remain a member of the British Commonwealth (and still is as a Republic). Later Mountbatten became Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and still later he rose to top post of First Sea Lord of the Admiralty - something he had aimed for for many years. Following this he was made Chief of Defence and was responsible for the safety of Britain should war ever again erupt. He travels the world yearly now, is involved with all sorts of projects including the International World Colleges Movement of which he is President. He was the nephew of the last Russian Tsar, is the uncle of the Queen's husband; his sister Louise was Queen of Sweden; his first cousin was the last Queen of Spain and he is literally related to the entire royal clans of Europe itself. He speaks three languages which he also reads and writes - English, German and French, which was taught him at home by his mother. He often went to Russia as a boy with his parents who went there to visit the Tsar and Tsarina and her other sister, the nun Elizabeth in Moscow. Sixty-seven years later Mountbatten once more visited Russia and the old family homes as he calls them that were once so familiar to him. He had, you see, been invited by the Russian government along with Averill Harriman of the USA and General Bilotte of France to come to Russia in May 1975 for the 30th anniversary of the ending of World War II. It seemed ironic that Mountbatten was to be invited to represent Britain for, as I wrote him, these very same people who must greet you officially now are the same that murdered your uncle and aunt in 1918!” I think I should consider myself fortunate to think that this man saw fit to send me 42 pages of his diary of that visit to Russia. It would give any reporter meat to make a story out of to be sure as it also involves Mountbatten's personal meetings with the Russian leaders as well as his private visits to all the many palaces his family once occupied. I have met the man five times, here in Canada and also in London. This was the man who wrote the Foreword to my “Book of Kings” and with whom I have carried on a correspondence for over 20 years. There must have been some reason for such a continuous association. There is. We happen to share identical hobbies - royal genealogies! Or perhaps it is as Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria said to me when I was visiting her home one time, "We know whether people are sincere when they write us. So many of the letters we receive end up in the waste baskets. Many are from plain cranks. But there was something about your letters that sounded different and sincere and so we answered."” Perhaps the fact that Princess Margarita, Prince Philip's sister, had told her about me helped but it would still require that letter to get through. The Princess Marie Louise also wondered what luck I was having getting answers and that if I had any trouble to tell her about it. She would contact the various members of the family to remind them that my letters were genuinely serious. In one case only was I having trouble at the time in question and this involved her cousin Micky, as she called him - Prince Nicholas Romanov, living in Rome. The Romanovs are terrible letter answerers and it did a lot of probing before I got my replies - though eventually they did answer. Cousin Micky had received my two previous letters alright but suspecting they were like so many others he, and all these same people receive In the mail, he set it aside and finally committed them to the waste basket. Princess Marie Louise told me to send her the questionnaires and she would send them on to her cousin. It worked. This time, not only cousin Nicky but his brother in Denmark came through with flying colours. Half the battle in getting The Book of Kings together was to get people to reply. But I must confess the replies were fantastic. I have close to 500 letters received from various members of European royalty and nobility over the years. When I have all the envelopes displayed showing all the stamps from literally every country in western Europe and around the world it presents quite an impressive collection. I have kept every one but because of lack of time they still inhabit a cardboard box stashed away in the attic. Some 150 individual people are involved in those letters. Some were never aware that they were related to other people of the European royal houses and since my root source began with George I of England (I located over 4000 of his descendants in a 300 year period in which they have lived) an Austrian Archduke said he had never heard of such an ancestor in his lineage but he was fascinated and wished to know the connection. An Italian Countess, nearly 90, who wrote during these years, told me how her mother had said they were related to the King of England but, she went on, "I never knew how until your enclosed chart showed me the connection". Some letters were very chatty such as one received from Queen Mother Helen of Romania. Written during the time of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 she went on, "Europe is such a sick man I think you are so fortunate to be living where you are."” She, too, had come through something similar in Romania in late 1947 when the communists took over the entire country and sent she and her son. King Michael, into exile.

Lord Mountbatten was instrumental in encouraging replies from other sources which usually worked. People who received my letters were, and quite rightly so, dubious over my seriousness and neglected to go further. On two occasions Lord Mountbatten loaned me private works he himself had written over the last many years. One, called “Relationship Tables” based on 15 various ancestral lines contained charted work on some 1600 relations. This had been put together by himself in 1939 during a serious illness. While recuperating he questioned his mother about all the family ties and she was able to verbally fill him in on them all. He recorded it and made this book to distribute to all his relatives much in the same way I collected the information for Our Family Tree” I suppose. He has also given me gifts of other books and these he fully inscribed complete with his autograph. Naturally they are highly prized. My last visit with Mountbatten occurred in London in November 1973 when my book was published. While at his home on the evening of November 7 I also met the Prince of Wales. Mountbatten had told me, over the phone, the day before, that he had a little surprise for me when we met and just a few moments before the Prince walked into the room Mountbatten said, "About that little surprise 1 told you about. It is the Prince of Wales who will be stopping by any moment now on his way to attend a dinner. He wants to meet you and will be in a great hurry, as always."” And within moments in he walked complete in dark trousers and white dinner jacket. No formality Involved, a simple introduction and conversation got under way. Certainly he was anything but shy and personality simply oozes out of him. As he said when he left, "I hear you are to come to the palace on the 14th. I'll see you then!"” And he did. As he came back from the balcony appearance he stopped by the suite to say "Hi".”

“The Book of Kings got off the ground in sort of an accidental fashion. Such a work as I was doing had been intended for the solving of my own interests in these people. Any such book would be limited to a small circle of interested historians, genealogists such as myself and probably to the people involved. The likelihood that any publisher would tackle such a work was very slim. Then, in 1964, a Greek friend of mine in Toronto, Ian Vorres, had written a book on the life and times of The Grand Duchess Olga who lived outside Toronto. His publisher in London wanted charts for the book. Ian felt he could not do such requested charts justice and wrote me asking if I would consider doing the work for him. I said I would so long as I was given credits for it in the book, which he did. The book is titled, ”The Last Grand Duchess” but at the moment I have no idea where one could get a copy. It is probably out of print by now. As a result of doing this work Ian's publisher wrote me and said how fascinated he and everyone else in the place was by what I had sent. I was further informed that he, the publisher, had some ideas in mind about my own work and it would be interesting to see what the weeks and months ahead may realize.” Those weeks and months evolved into nearly 10 years. During this time when the work had to be perfected as close to 100% as possible I had to type the entire work over 3 times. Fortunately I can type, after a fashion, or the task would have been impossible to hire someone to do it for me and pay them to do it. There were many ups and downs, even at one point wondering whether the book would ever get off the ground. And then one day, to make a very long story even shorter, it did. The book was going to the typesetter; the proofs were coming to me albeit their having to be sent to me from England via the mail services, my proofing them within 3 to 4 days (that’s all) and returning them via the mails. Once a friend from work traveling to London took the proofs I had ready and delivered them direct to the publisher's office. Then a wait for nearly a year before they had it printed and bound and ready. Then the request to come to England for the launching of the work to coincide with the marriage of Princess Anne. It was important that such a book be timed for some royal event and the publisher picked this one. As it turned out it held many surprises for me and I was able to meet many of the people, such as Prince Philip's two sisters from Germany and Grace Kelly and the King and Queen of Greece whom I would not have had a chance to meet at any other time. They were there for a wedding and I was there for a book launching.

But now it is all over. What to do? I want to write another work but certainly not as involved as The Book of Kings. But while I have waited to delve into this next project I decided to revert back to our own family tree and tidy it up a bit and probably, if all co-operate, bring out a second edition of Our Family Tree. As you can see I did just this. Strange as you may think this work was a breeze in comparison with The Book of Kings. Interestingly I felt the same excitement of achievement putting together our family tree book as I had putting the royal family book together.

Oddly, I do not have a first cousin in the whole of Our Family Tree. All are fairly distant family connections. The nearest McNaughton relation here at Hemmingford is a third cousin. But I had heard about all the earlier generations from my grandfather McNaughton who had something like 60 first cousins on his father's side of the family alone. With the first cousins on his mother's side it totaled to over 100! All were related, to my mind, but there must be some sort of order to it all. Who were they, where were they, where did they live, where are they still living if at all still alive, were some of the self-inquiring questions.

My day begins at 4:30 a.m. when I get up and drive the 50 miles to work one way. Once at work where all is quiet I have the greatest opportunity to concentrate. My thoughts are clearest in the morning and that is when I get the most accomplished. This entire book was typed between the hours of 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. each day from the end of July until today (November 7) as I now wind up the whole work. None of the book was typed in the page order you see it here. Actually the last chapter was done first, the first chapter was typed secondly and this after the third chapter or at least a part of the third chapter has been done last of all. It was simply a case of deciding where everything would fit into the book in some sort of order after everything was typed. I ran the whole affair off on the printing machine in the same mixed up order. I read a great deal (usually for a half hour before starting my days work and in the evenings before getting to bed by 9:30 p.m. Thursday evenings I am involved with choir work at the church as I am organist. We have just acquired a professional choir leader who is putting me through the traces as well which means some practicing on the organ on Saturdays for from 1 to 3 hours. It is a double key board with foot pedals and of course organ music is my favorite all-time music anyway. Writing letters and keeping apace of the latest that occurs in all the royal circles for the continuation of the records of the Book of Kings occupies some of my other leisure. My collection of over 7000 photographs based on the descendants of Queen Victoria alone have been catalogued into II huge albums. Then too I am called upon to give talks on the subject of the royal families from time to time. In March 1975 I was invited to speak to 200 students at the local high school who are involved with history. I didn't speak to all 200 at once the room was not big enough - but in seven different sittings. I started to talk at 9 a.m. and didn't shut up until 3:30 p.m. Being rather gabby, as this book will somehow tell you I must be, it was quite an experience and managed to not end up with a sore throat. I have a display to go with my talks and this always brings interest. I believe that any listening group must have something visual to see. Then too I prepare no talk. I speak off the cuff for after such a time period as I have spent on the subject it means a great deal more if one can deliver his speech without giving the impression that it has all been written down. I made that day interesting for myself in that each of the 7 talks given were done up a little differently each time. The school says it will have me back next spring for a repeat! Then in October 1975 a request from Cornwall, Ontario's historical society had me speaking there on the 22nd to over 100 present - again with display and all. Kingston, Ontario wishes me there in the spring of 1976. And so it goes. I have been on television both in Canada and England, also on radio and Interviews by the press. T.V. is the least rewarding. You never get enough time to say anything and you are at the mercy of the TV interviewer - his questions you depend upon for you must answer accordingly although there has been a couple of incidents where I managed to get the interviewer to not stray from the subject matter involved. In 10 minutes of any Interview your facts have to be at hand and time being precious you would like to cover the subject in quick detail so that at least the listening audience will be able to obtain some idea of what is involved.

Our Family Tree is no fly-by-night affair. I have been, and am, dead serious about it. I would like to finish by saying that I trust I was not too personal with any of you who received my letters of inquiry. It was not my intention to be so. Family trees require only vital statistics. Once assembled these are prized data that one must keep in mind may never get a second chance at being recorded. It is family genealogy at its finest presentation and I think any interested party looking at it should be bloody-well proud of it. I regret not all were able to reply in time to have their family fully registered but this cannot be helped. I ran up against the same thing in “The Book of Kings” and now they wished they had have answered, especially since it DID become a book. Being humans that we are we tend to not believe things. Once they are a reality people then begin to become more interested. Are we not all a bunch of skeptics?

I travel little and apart from two trips 20 years apart overseas that is the sum total of my visit’s abroad. When researching for The Book of Kings I traveled to Washington, D.C. and the fabulous Library of Congress that is there. Strangely Canada has no decent library, not even in Ottawa, and the material I needed was only in the Library of Congress. Realizing how poorly equipped the few reference libraries are here in Canada I decided to build up my own. It will be from this collection of books that I have at home that will create my next book. I need go no further. It has cost a great deal to compile such a self-made reference library but it was worth it. I prize books, good informative books that is. From them one can do all the traveling one needs to. And the people you meet in books is greatly rewarding. One must, however, be wary of the authors. There are good ones and not-so-good ones and it is a matter of sorting out the wheat from the chaff.

“What a perfectly insane hobby that family tree relative wrote 18 years ago! I would like to alter that now. The hobby itself was not half so insane as the author who created it. For only with persistence were the details ever able to be gotten together. But I must admit - it beats collecting rocks!