Understanding Ancestors Who Did Bad Things
Ora Smith | January 27, 2025
I grew up in California and still remember sitting in 5th grade class learning about the Civil War. I can’t recall all that was taught, but it was the first time I remember learning about slavery. I was appalled with…..
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An Interview Between Reverend Samuel Purchas and Powhatan Priest Tomocomo in London, England, 1616 (parts of which are used in the novel Powhatan’s Power by Ora Smith)
Ora Smith | October 26, 2024
Background I write what I call Heritage Fiction—novels about my ancestors. My interests lie in history, genealogy, and finding the truth. Although I write fiction, I use as many facts as I can to formulate my stories. The first novel…..
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What was The Peace of Pocahontas?
Ora Smith | October 13, 2023
When the English first established Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, their relationships with the Indigenous Peoples (sometimes called ‘the Powhatans’ after Chief Powhatan, Pocahontas’s father) was precarious. Powhatan and the English settlers regarded each other with suspicion. Eventually, the two groups…..
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Did My English Ancestor Marry a Native American in the 1600s?
Ora Smith | January 29, 2023
Have you ever had a coincidence happen where you wondered if it were more than mere chance? Was the event a happy accident or did God have a hand in it? I’ve decided to write about a recent “coincidence” even…..
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Were Your Ancestors Immigrants?
Ora Smith | September 29, 2022
In the 1930s, Marcus Lee Hansen conducted research on the history of immigration to the United States. He was posthumously awarded the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860: A History of the Continuing Settlement of the…..
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Was Howard Hughes Jr.’s eccentricity born of one woman’s checkered youth?
Ora Smith | November 30, 2021
I didn’t expect to consider that possibility when I set out to write Unacknowledged: The Possible Biological Mother of Howard Hughes. But as I researched, I had to wonder. Hughes was a household name for decades, but was his oddball…..
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