History Lesson

(Year 232, Spring) The ever enthusiastic leader of Mazaloom Historical Society since many years, Mila Munch (78), expresses one sincere wish: That more residents would build knowledge of the history of their family as well as of our community. There is a waiting list to join the popular Historical Society club, but Munch can recommend additional ways to get enlightened.

Mila Munch in Historical Society's genealogy library.

If she had to list just one field where Mazaloom kingdom did well, it would be to make the common history available to anyone interested. Did you know that the online registry provides family trees all the way back to Year 1? Or that the National Museum frequently display portraits and other old heirlooms showing the history of some of our early heroes? Or that there exists a packed History Book online, helping you to trace historical events and persons based on geographical region or department?

- I was raised to appreciate our past, says Mila Munch. She spend a few hours daily in her small annex on her private ground in Windenburg. That is where she helps residents to trace their family roots, but also where she administrates the Historical Society. - It's a mystery to me how many residents know so little!

Although she is most interested in family trees of royals and the other top aristocracy houses, she also find the more common trees interesting. - You only need to know your parents and grandparents, and with a few uncles and aunts, and your siblings and cousins, you already might have a good tree! Nobility and huge castles might not be guaranteed, but fact is that many regular families do descend from the high nobility without knowing it. The royal family can trace their roots all the way back to Medieval age, but you can be happy with less! A baron five generations ago makes for exciting stories, too! Even three generations can hold very interesting history if you know where they lived, how they made their living and so on. You will see who chose a different path in life, who had a traditional mindset, and their life length might tell you something about their health and residential conditions.

The Historical Society leader has plenty of ideas where you can look further.

- I would start with the online residents registry family trees. From the familytree page you get direct access to trees of all houses within aristocracy, but you can access anyone's tree from their personal Bio page, i.e. via the LOCAL menu. If you are a resident, then your parents are most likely registered, too. Anyone connected, if known, will be linked, too. Many of us find only a couple generations there, but perhaps some of the info provided will direct you further.

I would also check with libraries as well as the National Museum. They might occasionally host a mini exhibition including historical persons or events, and some museums even keep that material stored afterwards. When they exhibit old portraits, they often borrow the original painting from a related family, but if the family disapproves, the museum might create a copy for the exhibition - and the copy will often end up in their storage because it's the museum's property that might get relevant with a future exhibition.

Then we have the churches. They are not collecting a large amount of portraits, beyond their priests of course, but they might provide information on i.e. marriages. Priests often know quite a bit about the people of their parish.

Many regions have a few locations of historical value. They might not refer directly to your ancestors, but if your folk lived nearby, you can rest assured that they set foot there, in heir own time. Just like you can! Visit their hood, seek their everyday locations like the harbor, train station or old market to sniff a bit of their everyday life. If you follow your roots to multiple hoods, you will quickly see that they must have lived quite different lives.

My final suggestion would be the many statues. Most regions has quite a few of them, of course mostly presenting historical persons or events, but there might be connecting stories and traditions that also involve your ancestors. You would need to talk with locals to find clues. One example is a statue of the fantasy of a former Prince. It turned out the statue was made of local minerals, meaning all collectors and mineral diggers of that time had been commanded to deliver materials to this prestige project. This way the story of a poor farmer, who also collected gems, got linked to a royal statue. Who would have guessed?

These days Historical Society provides their knowledge to help the online History Book.

- Yes, we are looking into a source that most residents are not aware of, the old Ground Tax Book. Back in the Medieval Age, and up to the Great Revolution (Year 118) the Monarch would receive horses, sheep and nectar from anyone who owned land. Each lot size added to their debt, and the total debt decided how many horses and so on they had to deliver. This tax was set every 10th year, and ground owners would deliver their stuff during the following 10 years. It explains why most major ground owners kept horses - for producing more horses to pay their tax, of course! This is the only tax that we know of that did not include Simoleons, and we must assume it mostly aimed at high society. Poor families rarely owned land, and if they did it was normally just one smaller lot which would not involve a single horse but perhaps 3 sheep and some bottles of nectar. The Year 12 Ground Tax involved a total of  152 horses, 95 sheep and 476 bottles of nectar, all delivered at Heighwood Castle. The list was topped by Baron Ronan of Gloom, who paid 28 horses! We can assume the King needed the horses for battles, especially during the Medieval Era (Year 1-50).

This year the Historical Society introduces a brand new service!

- We are still in the planning, but we like to help residents to print and frame their family tree! We build trees based on 4 generations plus graphics indicating location and family crest if available. You see an early version on the wall behind me. Some trees might also be of interest to descendants outside the household that ordered the print, so those of high nobility houses, which can  be seen as less private, might be available to anyone in stores! This service will be released this Spring, hopefully. You can simply contact me and your family tree will be added to our waiting list. In some cases we will need several months, but it often takes less than a month.

With all these club activities, one can easily imagine that Mila Munch's to-do list is rapidly growing. We are very lucky to have her and Mazaloom Historical Society!