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ENJOY THIS
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From: MDelPa(a)aol.com
Return-path: <MDelPa(a)aol.com>
To: JoThomp(a)aol.com, GFSJim(a)aol.com
Subject: Genealogy Humor- I WANT
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 08:37:26 EDT
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Thought you might enjoy this.
Jayne
<< ------------------------------------------------------------------
Genealogy Humor
"I Want"
By Barbara A. Brown *
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yep -- I want ancestors with names like Rudimentary Montagnard or
Melchizedick
von Steubenhoffmannschild or Spetznatz Gianfortoni, not William Brown or
John
Hunter or Mary Abbott.
I want ancestors who could read and write, had their children baptized in
recognized houses of worship, went to school, purchased land, left detailed
wills (naming a huge extended family as legatees), had their photographs
taken
once a year -- subsequently putting said pictures in elaborate isinglass
frames annotated with calligraphic inscriptions, and carved voluble and
informative inscriptions in their headstones. I want relatives who managed
to
bury their predecessors in established, still-extant (and indexed)
cemeteries.
I want family members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the military as
officers and who served in strategically important (and well documented)
skirmishes. I want relatives who served as councilmen, schoolteachers,
county
clerks and town historians. I want relatives who 'religiously' wrote in the
family Bible, journaling every little event and detailing the familial
relationship of every visitor.
In the case of immigrant progenitors, I want them to have arrived only in
those years wherein passenger lists were indexed by National Archives, and I
want them to have applied for citizenship, and to have done so only in those
jurisdictions which have since established indices.
I want relatives who were patriotic and clubby, who joined every patrimonial
society they could find, who kept diaries, and listed all their addresses,
who
had paintings made of their horses, and who dated every piece of paper they
touched. I want forebears who were wealthy enough to afford, and to keep for
generations, the tribal homestead, and who left all the aforementioned
pictures and diaries and journals intact in the library.
But most of all, I want relatives I can find!!!
© Barbara A. Brown
* Ms. Brown's "I Want" article was originally posted in 1994 to the
National
Genealogical Conference, FIDO bulletin board forum.
>
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