Hank has been a professional genealogist since 1965. Hank is an entertaining genealogical lecturer, an accomplished writer and a respected Fellow and Past President of the American Society of Genealogists and Fellow of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society. He is best known for his extensive work with Palatine genealogy and for his popular book, Psychic Roots. Hank also has a long career as an entertainer and screen actor.
Disney animator Kevin MacLean has made a full-length documentary film celebrating the forthcoming 60th Anniversary of "Blackbeard's Ghost," Walt Disney's last personally-produced movie. Now that Peter Ustinov, Suzanne Pleshette, Dean Jones, and Elsa Lanchester have all passed away, Hank is "the last man standing" of the original featured cast. Click the video below to watch the "Coming Soon! - Beyond Godolphin - The Hank Jones Story" trailer ...
Hank is the Author of Nine Books
(Winner, Donald Lines Jacobus Prize: Best Genealogical Book of the Year)
A NOTE ON RETIREMENT, FROM HANK JONES
I guess you could say I’m retiring. I've been climbing the family tree since I was 8 years old and chasing Palatines since my days at Stanford in the early 1960's. I'm in my 80's now and have decided it's time to smell whatever roses I have left to smell. So after giving talks and genealogical seminars all around the USA and Canada since 1969, I'll leave the rubber-chicken circuit to the younger more-vital generation who can more easily navigate the perils and hassles of cross-country air travel much better than yours truly is able to do now.
Like the pack-rat that every good family historian should be, over the years I had amassed a huge amount of materials on 18th century German Palatine emigrants to facilitate research in my own home library. I've donated the entire collection (850 books, German-research reports from 1973-2021, atlases, and many genealogical journals) to the historical department of the Germantown, New York Library (31 Palatine Park, Germantown, NY 12526, 518-537-5800).. This vast collection will be available to use for all descendants of the Palatines and serious researchers at the very location where these courageous Palatines first settled in colonial America in 1710. I feel so good that the books “came home.” See the full inventory of books donated here.
I also have signed an agreement with Ancestry.com to purchase the electronic rights to all my books on the Palatines (7 titles, 10 volumes, 5,995 pages) which they have now digitized and have posted on a searchable special section on their website called "Palatine German Immigration to Ireland and U.S., Hank Z Jones Collection, 1654-1878." So if you are a "Worldwide Member" of Ancestry, you should have full access to all my books by clicking on https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62327/. It's a nice feeling to know that my lifelong work will endure and be accessible to help family historians today and long into the future.
I'd write more - but those lovely roses are beckoning.
All the best -- and "Good Hunting!" – May you always have “the happiness of pursuit,”
Hank
Henry Z Jones, Jr.
Past President & Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, &
Fellow of the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society