Robidoux Chronicles treats with comprehensive documentary detail the factual history of the Robidoux lineage in North America from the first progenitor who arrived in Quebec in about 1665, through the famous six brothers who distinguished themselves as Mountain Men, up until even recent times on reservations in the US. Many members of the Robidoux family were intimately connected to the entire history of the North American fur trade. The six brothers, born in St. Louis before the coming of Lewis and Clark, were important fur-traders during the classical Rendezvous era of the North American fur trade. They then became key players in the organization and articulation of the Overland Trail, only to die soon afterward in relative obscurity upon the plains of Kansas and Nebraska. By the 1950's, except for a handful of obscure and fragmentary publications, the story of the Robidoux had been almost entirely forgotten. Subsequent historians had lost all but a scant and fragmentary knowledge of the true role and exploits of the Robidoux and their French-Indian compatriots upon the frontiers of the old west. Antoine Robidoux was the first to establish permanent trading settlements west of the Rockies in the Inter-Montane corridor, and his brother Michel Robidoux was one of the first expeditions to traverse the length of the Grand Canyon, a half century before Powell made his epic boat-voyage down the Colorado River. The eldest brother Joseph Robidoux became one of the earliest established traders on the upper Missouri and founded St. Joseph, Missouri, which was later to be the primary starting point of the Overland Trail. His younger brother Louis Robidoux became one of the earliest ranch owners in California, becoming Don of the Jurupa, that encompassed the areas known today as Riverside, San Bernardino, San Jacinto and San Timoteo. An entire inter-tribal French-Indian ethnocultural orientation had developed upon the plains, prairies and mountains of the Trans-Mississippi west a good fifty years before the coming of the Iron Horse and the Pony Express, and has been carried on today in proximity to the reservations of Kansas and Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.

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Seventy million years ago there was explosive volcanic activity in the Mountains near Santa Cruz Valley. Thirty million years ago the volcanoes burst forth again to create sheets of black lava. Only the ancestors of the present day animals witnessed this spectacular event.

Scientists know that Paddy the Packrat is a descendant of the packrats that fearfully watched the exploding volcanoes.

The main characters of his historical story about southern Arizona are Sancho and Carlos- 300 pound bighorn sheep. They watched children who moved into their valley to work and play. As people moved in, some of the animals moved to the mountains in the surrounding valley. But Paddy the Packrat stayed to build his nest of 'junk': cacti, twigs and shiny objects.

Ice Age people came from Siberia with their wooly mammoths. Indians from Mexico arrived with corn seeds to plant. Father Kino brought the "rock horses" and an idea of a Mission from Spain. Chinese people came from the California gold fields to work on the railroad. The Santa Cruz Valley was fertile, protected by mountains with year round flowing water and food for the animals and people.

This is a story about the life of the animals, plants and children who came to the Valley before 1900. Part of the story is told in rhymes. Children can colour the pictures and search for Sancho, Carlos or Paddy in the illustrations. Historical dates, maps, photos and illustrations tell the story of the Santa Cruz Valley in the Southern Arizona Valley.

The history of morality in the United States, including Benjamin Franklin's moral intentions of the Constitution and Declaration and a fundamental history of Islam.

Other Books in the Trilogy of Life:

Book Two - Life Today: The True Story

Book Three - How To Win The Game of Life

Colonel James Smith, born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and was raised in the central Pennsylvania wilderness. He was captured and adopted into an Indian tribe at age 18, and he lived with them for almost five years before he escaped. He became the leader of the "Black Boys," a ranger company that defended the frontier. Smith was elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. Smith advanced to the rank of Colonel, then explored Kentucky and Tennesee. He moved to Kentucky, where he was elected to the Kentucky General Assembly.

This book is about the largest peaceful redistribution of wealth in the history of mankind and the creation of the North Slope Borough. It is the behind-the-scenes goings-on of a few very determined Native men with the financial assistance of a compassionate law firm to seek justice for the Native people of Alaska. The battle began in 1920 and, although it had a significant victory with the Alaska Land Settlement of 1971, still goes on.

The chronicle of the Bell family is one which will be familiar to thousands of other Canadians whose ancestors were part of a massive immigration from the British Isles to Ontario in the early 19th century.

Originally the Bells were one of the troublesome "riding clans" of the Scottish borders. (Another Bell group originated as an offshoot form Clan MacMillan in western Argyllshire) Many moved or were moved to Ireland in the early 17th century "Plantation" of Ulster, where their descendants remain to the present, as Ulster Scots. By the early 19th century severe economic depression, land pressures, and increased friction with the native Irish were widespread. It lead to a major emigration of Ulster Scots to North America, and particularly to Upper Canada. Their imprint on the character of Ontario persists to the present.

After describing the nature and character of the countryside and of the Bells generally in the Scottish Borders and in Ulster, the author follows his maternal ancestors as they experience the hardships of emigration in 1832 ("the cholera year") and deal with the demands of pioneering in a new country. Originally they settled just southwest of Peterborough, but subsequently were attracted northwards when the Haliburton Highlands were opened for settlement. There the Canadian Shield provided severely limited prospects for farming and the family relocated to north Simcoe County.

When the Canadian Northwest was opened for settlement in the late 19th century, several family members moved to what became today's Prairie Provinces. Those that remained in Ontario abandoned farming in the early 20th Century in favour of city life in a rapidly growing Toronto. Today's descendants are widely dispersed across central and western Canada and in the western United States.

The author draws on a wide spectrum of material - official records, contemporary newspapers and published accounts, family records, letters and interviews to provide a vivid backdrop for the lives of his Bell family over time. Material and information has been collected by him over twenty-five years, in Scotland, Ireland , Canada, and the Unites States.

Reaction from Readers

"There are several reasons to buy and read this book...if you would like to be inspired by the methodlology of a trained academic researcher and writer, this is a book for you...[This] is a work that speaks to us directly and immediately from the times and circumstances under consideration.

Len Chester - Families Magazine, May 2004

"A valuable addition to the Ontario pioneering literature"

Dr. J.D. Wood, Professor of Geography, York University, Toronto

"We do wish to congratulate you again for your outstanding book...It isimpossible to imagine the tremendous amount of research that you did. We find the amount ofdetailed history throughout so fascinating as well as the social and geographic studyof communities..."

Mr. & Mrs. Millburn Jones, genealogists, of Peterborough, Ontario

"The definitive chronicle of the Bell family migration...meticulously authored by ... a professor of international renown..."

Denis Bell - Canadian Representative of the Bell Family Association/Clan Bell Association

"...will be a most helpful reference aid for those searching Bell ancesors. You are to be congratulated on such an impressive piece."

Fintan Mullan - Executive Director, Ulster Historical Foundation

I just finished your book and felt at the end that your family history was virtually our family history. This is a wonderful study that I would call "middle history"... somewhere between global history and individual history (biography). Congratulations. What a tremendous amount of research you have done! I hope that this book becomes well known because, undoubtedly, it will save others a good deal of time in their family research.

A really strong point of the work is the well-reconstructed social and physical background to the various phases of the project. I particularly enjoyed information on the nature of the Atlantic crossing, indicating the many problems that could arise on the voyages about the time your ancestors immigrated to Canada. Quite an odyssey!

C.R. Harington - Curator of Quaternary Zoology Emeritus, Canadian Museum of Nature

The writer was inspired to write the book entitled “Two-Cent Worth” because of the continuing worsen economic conditions of African-American citizens in the United States. The book is an indictment of the United States government and several states that have denied African- American citizens their rights under the United States Constitution.

The premise of the book is that the rights granted under the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution have been violated since African-American citizens gained their rights in the 1860s and 1870s. The writer will take you on a journey demonstrating how the 13th, 14th and the 15th amendments to the United States Constitution were circumvented to allow the majority population to gain economic advantage at the expense of African-American citizens.

The book speaks on the use of the Christian religion to justify the denial of African-American citizens their constitutional rights. The book contain bible scriptures that illustrate the misuse and misinterpretation of the holy bible by entities who profit by denying African-American citizens their rights to housing, jobs, education, credit, land ownership, voting rights, and ect. The book also examines the role-play by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and the framer of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson is scrutinized because he was a slaveholder and his life contradicts the Declaration of Independence in which he wrote, “All men are created equal”. The book will open up the reader’s mind to why the United States and several states should pay economic reparations to African-American citizens for intentionally violating the constitutional rights of American citizens.

Kenneth Linton, an Australian who served during World War II as an accountant with the Royal Australian Air Force at its base in Madang, New Guinea, wrote his wartime memoirs in Esperanto. Ever since their publication in 1960, they have been enjoyed by Esperantists the world over. They are now available in a bilingual edition with an excellent English translation on facing pages. Desirous of getting to know the natives while off duty, Linton learned Tok Pisin, the Melanesian pidgin, which enabled him to befriend the non-commissioned officers of the native police. He began by offering to take their photographs and brought them small but highly appreciated presents. In return, they had their prisoners build a bungalow for him and his tentmates, a great improvement over the latter's canvas home. He then befriended the prisoners, one of whom gave him conversation lessons. This allowed him to establish a close relationship with Magheu, a man from the neighboring village of Kananam, who taught him how to spear fish from a canoe and invited him for lunch to his house, where he introduced him to his wife and little girl, who was about the same age as Linton's daughter. Later, Linton brought to the village some of his soldier friends, bearing some gifts. They were generously hosted and received much in return. As the Japanese had killed off all the pigs - or, more accurately, boar, wild and domesticated - of the region, the natives had no meat. Soon, tinned meat, kerosene, razor blades, matches, cigarettes, and other products were bartered with the natives for bananas, pineapple, mangoes and coconuts. This resulted in the base commander's permission to the group of soldiers and their native friends to sail on fishing and bartering expeditions along the coast of Astrolabe Bay, thus providing the base mess with fruit. During one of these voyages, the author was almost eaten by a crocodile. Another unfortunate result of porcine death was that young people could not get married if the fiance's father set his daughter's price at a pig or two. Having learned that there were wild boar on the island of Karkar and that one of the prisoners, Bafui the murderer, was the son of the chief of a village located on the steep slope of its still active volcano, the soldiers and their native friends received permission from the base commander to sail to the island in order to go on a boar hunt. Provided with a curious letter of introduction from Bafui, they climbed up the volcano to the isolated village, inhabited by savages, who helped them capture enough boar to replenish Kananam's supply and facilitate one marriage (as well as some future ones, we can assume). Not only is the marriage ceremony and the ensuing festivity vividly recounted, but throughout the book the fauna and flora are beautifully described, especially those seen in the coral reefs through the most limpid water.

Kenneth Linton, an Australian who served during World War II as an accountant with the Royal Australian Air Force at its base in Madang, New Guinea, wrote his wartime memoirs in Esperanto. Ever since their publication in 1960, they have been enjoyed by Esperantists the world over. They are now available in a bilingual edition with an excellent English translation on facing pages. Desirous of getting to know the natives while off duty, Linton learned Tok Pisin, the Melanesian pidgin, which enabled him to befriend the non-commissioned officers of the native police. He began by offering to take their photographs and brought them small but highly appreciated presents. In return, they had their prisoners build a bungalow for him and his tentmates, a great improvement over the latter's canvas home. He then befriended the prisoners, one of whom gave him conversation lessons. This allowed him to establish a close relationship with Magheu, a man from the neighboring village of Kananam, who taught him how to spear fish from a canoe and invited him for lunch to his house, where he introduced him to his wife and little girl, who was about the same age as Linton's daughter. Later, Linton brought to the village some of his soldier friends, bearing some gifts. They were generously hosted and received much in return. As the Japanese had killed off all the pigs - or, more accurately, boar, wild and domesticated - of the region, the natives had no meat. Soon, tinned meat, kerosene, razor blades, matches, cigarettes, and other products were bartered with the natives for bananas, pineapple, mangoes and coconuts. This resulted in the base commander's permission to the group of soldiers and their native friends to sail on fishing and bartering expeditions along the coast of Astrolabe Bay, thus providing the base mess with fruit. During one of these voyages, the author was almost eaten by a crocodile. Another unfortunate result of porcine death was that young people could not get married if the fiance's father set his daughter's price at a pig or two. Having learned that there were wild boar on the island of Karkar and that one of the prisoners, Bafui the murderer, was the son of the chief of a village located on the steep slope of its still active volcano, the soldiers and their native friends received permission from the base commander to sail to the island in order to go on a boar hunt. Provided with a curious letter of introduction from Bafui, they climbed up the volcano to the isolated village, inhabited by savages, who helped them capture enough boar to replenish Kananam's supply and facilitate one marriage (as well as some future ones, we can assume). Not only is the marriage ceremony and the ensuing festivity vividly recounted, but throughout the book the fauna and flora are beautifully described, especially those seen in the coral reefs through the most limpid water.

When the British attacked Charles Town, South Carolina in 1780, the world was literally turned upside down. Citizens who had lived peacefully beside each other for past decades suddenly became each others' enemies, for the British caused an uprising among one-half of the population against the other half. Young Sean O'Brien sees his father captured and dying of small pox. He joins others who believe they have to fight to secure their freedom. Sean first joins Colonel Sumter's brigade, then with Gates at Camden where he was wounded and captured. He is freed in a daring attack by Colonel Marion on the road to Charles Town. He joins Marion and is witness to many of Marion's true and real exploits. Then loaned to General Morgan, he sees action in western South Carolina and the victory at Hannah's Cowpens. He and his friends struggle through unbelievable conditions to reach Virginia and sanctuary where they join General Greene's army. After an engagement in which an entire Loyalist brigade is wiped out by a cunning and deadly plot, the Army takes on Cornwallis's troops at Guilford Courthouse. Sean is wounded but he survives. Throughout this story we see the lives of Sean's adopted family and the love of his life, Samantha. She is kidnapped by a British officer and later escapes. Another officer serving the British, A Hessian Prince, courts her and shows her the life of balls and parties in Charles Town under British rule. A cut-throat Partisan group led by Colonel Murphy descend on Samantha's family and rapes and murder ensues. Samantha's sister-in-law is killed and her brother goes after Murphy with a few of Marion's Partisans seeking revenge. After a number of skirmishes and battles by Marion and Greene, the British are finally defeated with Cornwallis retreating to Virginia and Yorktown and the remainder to Charles Town, eventually leaving there in 1782. This book lets the reader experience all the traumatic events of those years. Instead of reading pure history, the reader can experience history first hand and watch it come alive.

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