Genealogists - We Are CALLED Make Our Ancestors Live Again.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of our tribe. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us, "Tell our story!" So, we do. In finding the lost, we somehow find ourselves.

How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? More than I can count. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery or historical site about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying, "I can't let this happen."

The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. There is pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish, how they contributed to what I am today. WE must respect their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for US, their descendants. There is a deep pride in the fact that they fought and many died to make and keep us a NATION. And, equal pride and love that our own MOTHERS struggled to give us birth. Without each of them we could not exist, and so we scribes love each ancestor we find, as far back as we can reach. That everyone else might remember and cherish them.

So, with love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are, we annotate them. AND, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow the ancestors know and approve. Soon, it will be up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those whom we had never known before.

No book is entirely perfect for errors will creep in;
Sometimes wrong information is sent by someone's nearest kin.

And even printers make mistakes, for which they tear their hair.
Sometimes two people disagree on who or what or where.
It might have been the person who wrote the history,
it might have been the typist, or blame the author, me.

So if you're dead before you're born, or married when you're three;
Or I've omitted anyone who sent themselves to me.
If your last name is not your own and your picture not so good,
I ask you PLEASE forgive me, I did the best I could!

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Genealogists - We Are CALLED Make Our Ancestors Live Again.

Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of our tribe. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us, "Tell our story!" So, we do. In finding the lost, we somehow find ourselves.

How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? More than I can count. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery or historical site about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying, "I can't let this happen."

The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. There is pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish, how they contributed to what I am today. WE must respect their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for US, their descendants. There is a deep pride in the fact that they fought and many died to make and keep us a NATION. And, equal pride and love that our own MOTHERS struggled to give us birth. Without each of them we could not exist, and so we scribes love each ancestor we find, as far back as we can reach. That everyone else might remember and cherish them.

So, with love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are, we annotate them. AND, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow the ancestors know and approve. Soon, it will be up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those whom we had never known before.

No book is entirely perfect for errors will creep in;
Sometimes wrong information is sent by someone's nearest kin.

And even printers make mistakes, for which they tear their hair.
Sometimes two people disagree on who or what or where.
It might have been the person who wrote the history,
it might have been the typist, or blame the author, me.

So if you're dead before you're born, or married when you're three;
Or I've omitted anyone who sent themselves to me.
If your last name is not your own and your picture not so good,
I ask you PLEASE forgive me, I did the best I could!

++++++