Family Forest
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The Family Forest Project is an ongoing, large academic endeavor to digitize the world's known genealogy and family history information. Family histories once entered in the Family Forest may be traced generation by generation extending back in time over 3000 years to the beginning of recorded history.
The Family Forest Project was launched in 1995 and is the creation of Bruce H. Harrison and his wife, Kristine Harrison. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison are the principal owners of Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc. headquartered on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The Family Forest Project is the world's most complete, most interconnected and only academically cited digital resource for easily locating and researching deep ancestral histories. It currently lists in its bibliography over 700 published and online resources, including many out of print or rare books and genealogy journals.
In early 2007, the Family Forest Project comprised well over 7 million lines of proprietary computer code that precisely catalogs the family histories of those who left their mark and provided the DNA of over 2 billion living people. [1]
One of the unique strategic concepts that the Harrisons are credited with embracing from the beginning is known today as Stage Three Digital Content.[2]
Family Forest is a registered trademark of Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc. The Family Forest has been often reviewed by, and highly praised over the years by a number of genealogy experts. Perhaps the best known reviewer of the Family Forest is Richard Eastman [3]
Prior to the presidential election in 2004, the Family Forest was the first to announce and prove the ancestral relationship between President George W. Bush and his chief opponent in the election, Senator John Kerry. In an article appearing on the CBS News website, the Family Forest's founder, Bruce H. Harrison, is credited with discovering that the founder of Playboy Magazine, Hugh M. Hefner also shares ancestors with Bush and Kerry. All are distant cousins. [4]
In February 2007, the Family Forest Project made headline news by announcing discoveries about the ancestry of presidential candidate, Barack Obama. The Family Forest Project was showcased in a front page article in the Honolulu Star Bulletin[5] newspaper discussing several of the well-known ancestors the U.S. Senator from Illinois. Barack Obama is identified as having ancestral ties to a number of former presidents, including a 4th cousin relationship to Harry Truman. Senator Obama is also mentioned in the article as known to have a distant cousin relationship to U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona as well as the composer Quincy Jones. This ground-breaking announcement of Obama's ancestral presidential heritage was picked up by the Associated Press wire (AP)and set off a large number of genealogy-related stories about the candidate, many concerning his maternal ancestors who were known to own slaves.
In October 2008 The Family Forest Project again made both national[6] and international [7] news by announcing the discovery that Alaska Governor (and Republican vice-presidential candidate) Sarah Palin has a number of family ties to well-known Hawaiian families, and also that Palin and actor Alec Baldwin are distant cousins. This news broke the week that Baldwin and Palin's appearance together on Saturday Night Live made the news. The AP story appeared in over 85 online and print news publications.
On November 3, 2008 Bruce Harrison was interviewed for television news by Big Island Video News[8] and demonstrated the how the Family Forest Project was involved in digitizing deep family ancestries and appropriately connecting the dots of recorded history.
