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)

In memory of Betty and Iola and Dorris

Psalm 102:18

Let this be written

for a future generation . . .

Alex Haley is often quoted as having said that when an old person dies, it is like a small library burning. 

The difference is, most libraries only have books for which there are duplicates in many other libraries. 


But when an old person dies, it is a tragic loss of the many and varied pages and chapters of the assorted books of that person's unique life . . . it is left to us, the living, to remember and record and memorialize their stories . . .

Remembering and honoring
the varied lives of . . .

BETTY NALLS
my neighbor and friend
21 January 1928 ~ 17 January 2018

IOLA AVRETT
my 1st cousin once removed
11 February 1921 ~ 20 January 2018

DORRIS HENRY
mother of my 2nd cousins
19 January 1926 ~ 20 January 2018

Let them not vanish

like ghosts of forgotten memories . . . 

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 . . .

Converse with the Fathers

Here, if anywhere, we can hold converse with the fathers, and feel that the names which we read were borne by men and women who were alive in our town when its inhabitants numbered but a score, and when the first grave was made of the thousands that have received the successive generations of citizens.


Sarah Loring Bailey
22 April 1834 ~ 08 September 1896
from her Historical Sketches of Andover
 

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.

Flag Day 1917

This postcard from my private collection is postmarked June 20, 1917. On June 14, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson gave the following speech in honor of Flag Day.





This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours.

It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us, speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us, and of the records they wrote upon it.

We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people.

Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nation.

We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people.

Life is no brief candle to me

Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch
which I have got a hold of

for the moment,
and I want to make it burn

as brightly as possible
before handing it on

to future generations.

 

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist
1925 Nobel Prize for Literature