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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 3 customer reviews )
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Ichabod lives Jun 02, 2009
By Howard S. Petersen
"Karen E. Petersen"
I just finished reading Searching for Ichabod and I absolutely loved it. I thought that Julie did a wonderful job of weaving her story with Ichabod's story. I highly recommend this book.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Finding Ichabod - Finding Home May 28, 2009
By David Foster
Reviewing the delightful "Searching for Ichabod" has involved a couple of dilemmas. Last month, a long-lost cousin sent me a book she had written and I reflexively turned to my ready kit of excuses for putting it onto the "perhaps next year" pile. Then I read the darn thing and it turned out to be an exciting, edifying and surprisingly moving tale.
Thus I was faced with the brand new problem of explaining to all of you why I'm touting cousin Julie Foster Van Camp's genealogical adventure or, to put it directly, who could possibly be interested in whether Ichabod Foster (1740-1813) sired, in 1785, a son named "Albro," thus connecting my Washington County, Iowa, branch of the Foster family with John Foster, who arrived in Salem, Massachusetts about 1631?
The short answer is that "Searching for Ichabod" is only incidentally about one family's tree. Rather, it is vivid American history at the barnyard and grass-roots level, it is a compelling mystery-story that conveys the joys, frustrations and serendipitous confluences of genealogical snooping and, most importantly, it is an authentic, highly personal revelation of the psychic and spiritual rewards of unsnarling one's past.
After the almost simultaneous deaths of her father and brother and the psychological withdrawal of her mother, Julie Van Camp experienced an emptiness that a happy marriage, a rich family life and a rewarding career could not totally fill. Having become the unwitting trustee of the few scraps of family history that remained after a long-ago fire, she gradually became more and more immersed in genealogical research until, in 1997, she acquired a portion of the diary of Ichabod Foster, followed in 2001 by more entries. Armed with the diary as her guidebook, she took to the road from Rhode Island to Vermont and then to New York to "find" Ichabod and the frontier world of his family.
Ichabod's life spanned and his locale necessitated involvement in the French and British struggles for North America, the often-vicious conflicts with Native American tribes, the War for Independence and the War of 1812. But these were only the headline, "history-book" events that rose above the fabric of the incredibly hard life of a farm family struggling to feed, clothe and nurture its members. The author recreates this for us by interspersing passages from the diary with her own observations and feelings as she walks along Ichabod's roads, explores the barn, kitchen and basement of his house, and tracks his final journey.
Ichabod's diary is that of a self-sufficient man of the soil: its subjects are the spring's first robin, hay making, hog butchering, home remedies. No Proustian navel-gazing here. It is also the diary of a man of practical faith for whom the Bible is a reliable guide to personal morals, family relations, business ethics and animal husbandry. Most of all, his daily entries portray a man filled with energy, courage and the steadfast will to make a life under circumstances that shame our pitiful Twenty-First Century anxieties.
However valuable the book is as history, much of its delight comes from following the author as she encounters and either charms or jousts with town clerks, librarians, gurus of the genealogy game, B. & B. owners and others who show up along her (and Ichabod's) path to either frustrate or abet (some in very unintended ways) her search.
But the real pay-off is Julie Van Camp's willingness to share, with endearing candor, what finding Ichabod has meant to her: "If ancestors are remembered, I believe they never die. They live in our souls, in our imaginations, in our hearts, in our writings. Had I been searching for Ichabod or had he been searching for me? Each spring on Lopez Island, I listen for the return of his first robin."
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
An Inspiring Trip Into The Past! Jun 07, 2009
By Henry Z. Jones, Jr.
Julie Foster Van Camp's new book "Searching For Ichabod" is one of the best books I've ever read detailing and documenting a genealogical journey. As she puts on her Sherlock Holmes hat and takes the reader along on an intriguing quest to find out more about her ancestor, she makes her forebear come alive again, blending his own personal story in context with the fascinating times in which he lived. Ms. Van Camp completely succeeds in putting flesh and blood on the genealogical skeleton of names and dates - the ultimate goal of every descendant climbing the family tree. Highly recommended!
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