"People of the Rocky Homeland"


As you might know, James Harris (Jim) Creighton from Arizona, USA, has been working for a number of years on a book about the history of the originally Scottish, but now worldwide Creighton/Crichton family? The Dutch Creyghton/Creijghton family also descends from that family. Title of the book: "People of the Rocky Homeland", subtitle "The History of Creighton, Crichton and Creyghton". In 2003 Jim paused compiling the Creighton book in order to finish a similar book about his mother's Poore family.

In December 2004 Jim finished the Poore book, of which a preliminary version is available in CD-form under the title "Eastwind-Westwind". Right after he received the first CD-copy of his Poore Book, Jim died quite suddenly and unexpectedly, on June 10, 2005 at the age of 58 from the consequences of a heart attack. He left behind an almost complete, but not yet finalised manuscript of the PRH Book. Just a few weeks before his death he sent us the message that later that year he would resume work on the Creighton Book and asked us to cooperate on chapter 4, dedicated to the European branches in genral and the Dutch Creyghton branch in particular. Below a picture of the PRH front page, containing a copy of Jim's drawing "Tree of Life" and the date of the last draft. 
 

Front page of the book "People of the Rocky Homeland" by Jim Creighton, picturing his drawing
 "Tree of Life", containing the Poore heraldics on the left and the Creighton heraldics on the right.


After Jim's untimely death his sister Susan Creighton-Curtiss has taken upon her the task of completing, editing and publishing the book in memory of her brother. With the help of Jim's wife Kathi, Jim's former associate Bil Jacobs and our Creyghton group we have succeeded in assembling a complete draft of the total book. Although some parts still only in a preliminary draft form. According to Jim's earlier plans the draft also incorporates relevant parts of both the Poore Book ("Eastwind-Westwind") and Jim's earlier book about his own Creighton family history and genealogy: "Northwind-Southwind". Besides creating the final text we will add the necessary annotations, footnotes and literature references. Another point of concern is  collecting illustrations for the book and creating a final lay-out.

Progress

As it seems now, the cooperation is heading for success. The book contains 6 main parts with respectively 12, 25, 88, 26, 44 and 88 pages plus 4 or more appendices. Parts 1, 2, 3 and 5 have been completed and have had a more or less final editing. All chapters of part 6 have been recovered and Susan is busy retyping and at the same time editing this part 6. Part 4, which is about the European (continental) Creighton branches, including the Dutch Creyghton branch, is partly finished and edited and partly still in progress. The key issue is the incorporation of the latest findings, mainly from the research by Joep Creyghton. It might be expected that both part 4 and 6 may be finished in concept by mid February 2006. There is however a serious delay in the final editing. The first complete concept version is now expected early 2008.

For those amongst you who are impatient and would like to know how the PRH Book finally would look like, we have prepared a partial copy of the complete text. Most of the pages are in (Word) text, but some are still only available as page-scans, including notes in pencil. Because of obvious reasons like copyright only a partial draft is available, containing the full Table of Contents, all appendices and the first 3 or 4 chapters of each of the 6 parts. For this our apologies. However, this partial draft should give you a good idea of what the complete and final book will contain.

Download

The available version is dated February 24, 2006 and can be downloaded as a PDF-file through the following link:

After un-zipping (standard Explorer-function in Windows XP) you will find the book in PDF format. For reading and/or printing you need the free Adobe Reader. Maybe (probably) you already installed a copy. If not, go to the Adobe website and download Adobe Reader via the following link:

If you run Windows 98 or 2000, you might need WINZIP to unzip the download file. You can find a trial copy of WINZIP at he following place:

Laatste wijziging: 29.11.2007