I tried contacting Jane Ellen Swan privately, a short time ago. She once
was an active member of this list. The last time I corresponded with her
she was recovering from an illness. Since I haven't heard back I tried
looking at the SSDI and found:
Hi Bobbi:
I, like you have tried to contact Jane to no avail. The last contact
she posted on the List indicated that she would no longer be monitoring
and/or responding to any postings on the list. If I recal, she was
suffering from cancer. A neighbor of mine has her books and wanted me
to ask Jane a question about a surname which was mentioned repeatedly
in her books. I was never able to contact her. The books do indicate
her full name was Jane Ellen Swan. Also I rember that she lived on the
east coast.
I found an obit for Jane Ellen Swan of Port Charlotte, Fl, but it made
no mention of her books. However, I just found in the Hannover-L
archives this statement in one of her postings when she was giving Fred
a lecture.
Port Charlotte)."
It appears that we have lost Jane. I wish that I am wrong.
Gale
I was an officer of the SW FL Genealogy Society and we had our
meetings in Port Charlotte. She was a member. Jane was sickly about
two years ago and would miss meetings but she never complained about
anything. I've since dropped out of the group as it is a long drive to
get there for me. When we founded the group we were going to rotate
meeting places around SW FL but that turned into too many
complications.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the obit points to our Jane. I'm in the
process of verifying that.
As to our arguments - basically Jane wrote fiction and put a bend on
it that didn't reflect real life all the time. At least according to
my readings in contemporary works (of that era) she based her writings
on her own family history and not on a more generalized even view. She
had a fetish about Hanoverian vs Prussian conflict in the latter 19th
century which, she claimed, eventually resulted in war between the two
nations. It was a much larger picture involving German unification
which switched old allegiances toward different goals then having all
these little vulnerable (mostly to French aggression) German states.
But it's a long story.