Your Affectionate Father

Dear Children:

Being sensible the foregoing genealogy neither is or can be of any public benefit, it cannot be worthy of public notice. I therefore have no other meaning than to hand it down to you, to the end that you and your descendants may (if you or any of them have or may have the curiosity) look back to the first of the family... from whom you derived your nativity, and may continue it along to many generations, if you or any of them think proper to do it; with that view (and no other) it is presented to you by your

Affectionate Father

(letter written by Gen. Joseph Frye- 19 Mar. 1783)

I hope you can hear the laughter

 I hope death

is like being carried to your bedroom

when you were a child

and fell asleep on the couch

during a family party.

I hope you can hear the laughter

from the next room.

~~~~~

Please leave a comment if you know who wrote this. The earliest post I found was in 2022, but with no attribution.

Sentimental Sunday :: Remembering the Grandmas

Remembering the Grandmas on Mother's Day . . .




I hear the voices of my grandmas
Calling out from a distant past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."


Tell the children of our wanderings
Let the kinfolk hear the tales
How we braved the new horizons
How we blazed the olden trails.


How we buried too many babies
How we struggled to keep them fed
How we caressed the hands of our loved ones
As they lay dying on their beds.


How we endured many a hardship
With an eye to the future goal
To create a more promising future
And to keep our family whole.


They were as different from each other
As the scraps in a crazy quilt
Yet once the pieces were sewn together
Another generation they had built


I can sense them calling out to me
From the gloaming of my past
"Please do not let us be forgot.
Record our stories that we may last."

The above family poem was composed by me back in 2009 in response to a challenge posted at Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Poetry and Genealogy . . . and the Wordle (name cloud) was created at wordle.net . . .

Why Me?

Why me?

This is a tedious task,

much work.

Not a great tree,

my family,

Not any kind of tree,

A spindly twig....

A stunted sapling

of little importance,

No forest giant we.

A pause

Ethereal whispers

persuasive

soft

and still . . .

"Daughter,

if you don't remember us,

Who will?"

Dot Stutter

Victoria, BC. Canada

1996

'Til the season comes 'round again

Come and gather 'round at the table
in the spirit of family and friends
and we'll all join hands and remember this moment
'til the season comes 'round again

So let us smile for the picture
and we'll hold it as long as we can
may it carry us through should we ever get lonely
'til the season comes 'round again

One night, holy and bright
shining with love from our hearts
by a warm fire let's lift our hands high
and be thankful we're here 'til this time next year

May the new year be blessed with good tidings
'til the next time I see you again
if we must say goodbye let the spirit go with you
'til the season comes 'round again

One night, holy and bright
shining with love from our hearts
by a warm fire let's lift our hands high
and be thankful we're here 'til this time next year

May this New Year be blessed with good tidings
'til the next time I see you again
we'll all join hands and remember this moment
and we'll love and we'll laugh in the time that we have
'til the season comes 'round again

John Barlow Jarvis & Randy Goodrum

The Family Scribe -- every family has one

My feelings are in each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors . . . to put flesh on their bones and make them live again . . . to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.


To me . . . doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before.


We are the story tellers of the tribe . . . all tribes have one . . . 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 . . . and, in finding them, we somehow find ourselves.


How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors you have a wonderful family you would be proud of us? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.


It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who am I and why do I do the things I do.


It goes to seeing a cemetery 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. It goes to doing something about it.


It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today.


It goes to respecting 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 deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a Nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them.


So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are them and they are us.


So, as a scribe called I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their 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 put flesh on the bones.

Versions of this piece are found quoted on genealogy sites all over the internet. It is most often attributed to Della M. Cummings Wright.

Tombstone Tuesday :: Seated on an old grave

I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. 

Fifty and more graves are quite plainly traceable and as many more decay’d out of all form - depress’d mounds, crumbled and broken stones, cover’d with moss - the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. 

There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have been to me? 

My whole family history with its successions of links, from the first settlements down to date, told here - three centuries concentrated on this sterile acre.” -- Walt Whitman (1819-1892) from Specimen Days

Easy to Go Home

The other day I passed a place
you always liked to go,
And I picked up the phone because
I thought you'd want to know;
But I forgot that you weren't there,
Oh, I miss you so these days,
But I'm reminded of your smile
and the funny things you'd say.

You left a grieving family,
and friends who love you, too,
Though I have felt you many times,
And know you saw me through;

I always long to feel your arms
and look into your eyes,
And talk forever me and you
somewhere in Paradise.


Knowing we can spend a lifetime
reminiscing on the past,
Knowing I will see your face again
where tender moments last;

It makes me want to be there
knowing I won't be alone,
Knowing you'll be there
makes it easy to go Home.


Performed
by
Guy Penrod

Today I visited yesterday . . .

Today I visited yesterday
And walked among the graves
Of family and friends from long ago
Whose memory had begun to fade.


  The graves were unattended
As were my thoughts of them
When a vision of the ages past
Brought back my sense of kin.

The vision showed the church lawn
On a crisp summer day
The table spread, the food prepared
And friends who would break bread.

  All my relatives were there
both young and old
Grandma and I walked hand and hand
Sharing stories never told.

We laughed and cried
And shared our thoughts
And I found the friend
I thought I'd lost.

As the sun began to fade . . .
The church bell rang out clear
Grandma and the others
slowly disappeared . . .

  Today I visited yesterday
And now the memory is strong
Of the family from which I came . . . and now belong . . .

by Pat Conner Rice

We're all here for a family reunion . . .

Here we are . . . 
gathered together again . . .
on this . . . 
our Reunion Day.
 
Reminiscing 
and laughing 
and crying . . .
about all of our yesterdays.

Those special times . . . 
we vow ne'er to forget . . .
as the years . . . 
how they seem to fly.
 
And our precious loved ones . . . 
so sorely missed . . .
as one-by-one . . . 
they have said, "good-bye."

But for now . . . 
I believe they are with us . . .
and if we could hear them . . . 
perhaps they would say,
 
"May the circle once again be unbroken . . .
on this . . . Our Reunion Day."

And as we travel on . . . 
through life's unknown days . . .
may we anticipate that day up in Heaven,
 
When we'll all gather 'round . . . 
and once again hear them say . . .

"We're all here for a Family Reunion!"




 
P.S. I vaguely remember being inspired to pen these words by something I read . . . somewhere. While Googling parts of the above poem, the poem posted > HERE < is the only thing similar that came up.

Do not stand at my grave and weep . . .

Gentle Autumn's Rain

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain

When you wake in the morning hush
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight
I am the soft starlight at night
I am the song that will never end
I am the love of family and friend

I am the child who has come to rest
In the arms of the Father  who knows him best
When you see the sunset fair
I am the scented evening air
I am the joy of a task well done
I am the glow of the setting sun

Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die

Original verse by Mary Frye (1932)
Additional verse by Wilbur Skeels (1996)

We are formed by our family histories

How easy it is to forget from where family has come and how far. How easy to forget, as I sit at my computer, my grandfather's battered lunch pail, and my grandmother leaning over an aluminum tub with a washboard and Grandpa's soapy shirt. Such knowledge brings humility. It demands gratitude. We are formed, in part, by our family histories. . . . from Family history is more than names by Tina Griego, Denver Post Columnist