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)

Restoring Ethics to Genealogy

To be a Responsible Genealogist is to be honorable, fair, and truthful,  

to show respect for your ancestors by presenting a true and complete picture of their existence,  

to be fair to your fellow genealogists by acknowledging their contributions to your research,  

and to be relentless in your pursuit of factual data and in the search for the truth.  

Barbara A. Brown

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.