Orphaned at the age of three with his four sisters and brother, William Maris, following a basic Quaker education, moved from his native rural town of Springfield, Pennsylvania, to the bustling metropolis of early 19th-century Philadelphia when he was in his early teens.Mentored by his older brother Richard, Maris opened a mercantile business on the city's rough and tumble wharves at nineteen. Three years later, in 1803, William married Jane Beaumont, daughter of John Beaumont, one...

When he left England in 1630 in search of religious freedom and opportunity during the Great Migration to the New World, pilgrim Edward Fitz Randolph Jr. could never have imagined the vast impact his descendants would have on the creation of America.Originally settling in Plymouth Colony, he later moved his family to New Jersey after the Puritan theocracy denied the very freedom he had sought. In 1669 the Fitz Randolphs became a founding family of New Jersey. Edward and his sons we...

The Parrys left England to practice their Quaker religion without ridicule. They found their home in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where they went on to become one of the regions most illustrious families.Follow two generations of the Parry family, spanning a period of one hundred years from the pre-Revolutionary War to the end of the American Civil War. They rely on their knowledge, skills, and steadfast determination to leave a lasting impact on both New Hope and Philadelphia.T...

During the 1958 World Expo, in Brussels, a part of the original manuscript of Mozarts Requiem Mass containing the last four words ever written by the great composer was stolen. It has never been recovered. In his suspense novel, Requiem for Riley, Roy Ziegler presents the gripping story about a powerful global investment broker, Heinrich Winterbottom, and his quest to find the precious fragment. The story involves international intrigue and a death-defying plot that unfolds in one of the m...

At the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the Austrian government exhibited the original autograph manuscript of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor. During the exhibition, a corner of a page of that precious manuscript was torn off and stolen. According to many musicologists, that missing fragment contains the last four words ever written my Mozart.Mozart’s Last Words is a compelling story about a recently retired chief inspector of the Brussels Police Department w...