Psychic Roots: Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The first words I ever heard about genealogy were, "Hank, don't go in the trunk!" And my mother meant it!..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, New Jersey, John Kirchman (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Psychic Roots is all about the influence of coincidence and serendipity on genealogical research, the chance combination of events over which the researcher has no control but which nevertheless guides him to a fortuitous discovery. Certainly chance or dumb luck sometimes leads us straight to a record kept in an improbable place, to an ancestor's second wife we didn't know anything about, and so on. Is it luck? Coincidence? In this book, esteemed genealogist Hank Jones tells us about his own brushes with preternatural experiences, and he has invited other genealogists to share their experiences as well; thus in these pages we have the insights of well over a hundred respected ancestor hunters who discuss their experiences in light of synchronicity, intuition, genetic memory, and serendipity. Their stories fairly crackle with illumination and make a plausible case for the importance of the sixth sense in genealogical research.

Product Details

• Paperback: 236 pages
• Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Company; 1ST edition (June 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806313889
• ISBN-13: 978-0806313887
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #614,172 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Waking up to invisible around us, July 29, 2000

By	George W. Fisk (St. Joseph, MI USA) - See all my reviews

I had always avoided the subject of genealogy as being completely boring. It conjured up visions of people sitting in libraries for hours and hours going over ancient records trying to find names of their long-dead ancestors. What a weary way to waste one's days! However, a friend recently put into my hand Henry Z. Jones' PSYCHIC ROOTS, Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy. It has totally changed my views. I was amazed to find success in genealogy often comes from intuition, searching not with just the mind, but also an open heart, enjoying warm feelings with the desceased. Again and again in his book, Jones describes how helpful hints, items seemingly droppped from nowhere, somehow unite the living with the thoughts and deeds of the departed. As the author concludes:"I do believe that our ancestors have no wish to be forgotten: they want to be found." And I would add, our ancestors have been over and about us since we were born, seeking to lead us into ever greater dimensions. Genealogy can open the doors to deeper understanding of our larger family "in the beyond," but still close in influence and love. Don't miss this book. It will open your heart to ancestors who are as close as breathing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Psychic Roots - A Genealogy Librarian's Review, July 19, 2007

By	Nancy Maxwell "Genealogy Librarian" (Grapevine, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Has an ancestor ever just 'fallen' into your lap? Have you ever found what you were not looking for? Have you ever pulled the `wrong' book off the shelf and found an answer in it? Have you chased ancestors until they found you?

If you can answer 'yes' to any of these questions as they pertain to genealogy - and even if you can't - you can certainly appreciate unexpected surprises. I would venture to say that most of us have experienced things like this even in non-genealogical situations.

Hank Jones's "Psychic Roots: Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy" and his follow-up book, "More Psychic Roots: Further Adventures in Serendipity and Intuition in Genealogy" demonstrate the reasons for his venture into the `less scientific' methods of finding ancestors. He begins with the premise that our ancestors want to be found. For him, it all started when he was a young boy peeking into a forbidden trunk in an attic. In writing this book, he is, as far as I know, the first professional genealogist to mention out loud and in print, the possibility that our ancestors want us to find them and will use various ways to get us to do that which are not always based solely on solid, scholarly research methods.

As a genealogy librarian, I've heard stories like those in Hank's books many times. Hank says initially he was concerned about taking some flack for his theory, which some professionals would criticize as undermining years of attempts to make genealogy a more solid, respectable field of research, based on sound reasoning, solid research methods, and hard evidence. His call for examples of `psychic roots' experiences brought stories even from some of the most respected names in the field. He was surprised that even the genealogical scholars had moments like this that they were willing to share, that they also wondered if something unexplainable was at work all along but were reluctant to share it.

Hank's books provided a `safe place' to share stories of strange coincidence and serendipity. He had so many responses to his invitation to genealogists to share their own stories that he wrote the second book. I think Hank's theory has been more than validated. I suspect that any qualms he may have had about being taken seriously diminished as the stories rolled in.

Hank does not for a moment lessen the importance of sound, solid research methods. He himself is a distinguished Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. But neither does he discount or dismiss the less-scholarly methods that bring us many of the answers we seek. He's seen, heard, and read far too many examples to brush them off simply as stories of just dumb luck, although even dumb luck can sometimes be a factor in a fortuitous find.

Another concept Hank discusses in conjunction with serendipity and intuition is psychologist Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity, which is the occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events that come together in a meaningful way that cannot be explained to the person experiencing them. In short, synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence." It might even be called `being in the right place at the right time.'

So what's actually responsible for `strange' successes in genealogy? Serendipity? Preparation? Accident? Solid research? Educated guesses? Intuition? Being in the right place at the right time? I think it's probably a mixture of these and other things. How would we know we were having a Eureka moment if we hadn't laid some kind of groundwork already? We may not have been prepared to find the answer this way, so we may think it simply jumped out at us. Maybe we'd filed something years ago that didn't really connect with what we knew at the time, but couldn't just toss it out. Down the road, we find something that makes us rifle through that file for that seemingly unconnected piece of evidence, and our puzzle - or maybe just a part of it - is solved. I believe in what Louis Pasteur said: "Chance favors the prepared mind." But I also believe what Jules Henri Poincaré said, that "It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."

4.0 out of 5 stars Not "hard-core" genealogy but fun and interesting, June 25, 2007

By	Michael K. Smith (Gonzales, Louisiana) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Hank Jones spent twenty years in movies, especially Disney films, and that freed him up later on to pursue his genealogical interests, both as an author and as a well-known national conference speaker, for both of which he received the NGS Award of Merit. He's best known as the expert on the Palatine German immigrants, but also for this volume about the influence of coincidence, intuition, and serendipity in family research -- and we've all experienced it: The nagging feeling that you really need to venture up into a strange courthouse attic, no matter how dark it is; the discovery that the person sitting next to you on your flight to Salt Lake is your fourth cousin; the search through a cemetery for a particular grave that unexpectedly turns up a branch of the family you had no idea was there. (All three of those examples have occurred in my own immediate family, by the way.) The author relates his own brushes with the preternatural and brings together the similar experiences of several dozen other researchers, including such well known figures as Carl Boyer, William Filby, Charles Hansen, Helen Leary, Joan Kirchman Mitchell, Marsha Hoffman Rising, Christine Rose, Eugene Stratton, Neil Thompson -- and Winston De Ville.