Tarver-Gen: Tarver Family Research http://www.tarver-genealogy.net -------------------- : FUN STUFF - I Want Ancestors Who ... -------------------- 1. I want ancestors with names like Rudimentary Montagnard or Melchizenick von Steubenhoffmannschild or Spetznatz Giafortoni, not William Brown or John Hunter or Mary Abbott. 2. 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. 3. I want relatives who managed to bury their predecessors in established, still-extant (and indexed) cemeteries. 4. I want family members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the military as officers and who served in strategically important (and well documented) skirmishes. 5. I want relatives who served as councilmen, schoolteachers, county clerks and town historians. 6. I want relatives who 'religiously' wrote in the family Bible, noting every little event and detailing the familial relationship of every visitor. 7. 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. 8. 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 houses, and who dated every piece of paper they touched. 9. 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. 10. But most of all, I want relatives I can FIND!!! Barbara A. Brown did not write the following portion of the poem, it is not a part of her original writing. The contributor is unknown. ----------------------- But This is What I Got ... ----------------------- I got relatives who came across the ocean as indentured servants. I got relatives who could not read or write. I got relatives who were too poor to own a Bible, and too illiterate to write in them even if they could afford to buy one. I got relatives who never owned land or any other personal property and therefore were never listed among the taxpayers. I got relatives who never wrote a will or left an estate worthy of probate. I got relatives who never appeared in county or circuit court, or if a rare few appeared in the records it was for being arrested making bootleg whiskey. I got relatives who worked the land as sharecroppers. I got relatives who hid from the census taker or whose vicious dogs frightened the census taker away. I got relatives who never served in the military service if they could elude the conscription officer. I got relatives who never went to school or church. They may have attended a campground revival but left no attendance records. I got relatives who seldom had their photos taken, and after viewing the few who did, I had just as soon they hadn't. I got relatives with ordinary names like Hall, Ellis, Smith, Jones but nothing written about them but the local library has fourteen volumes on the Schimmellfugger family. In conclusion, I got relatives who were as ordinary as common dirt, who were born in poverty, strove and struggled through their lives, and died in poverty. They were the common folks who are often described as the "salt of the earth." And I am still proud to call them kinfolks...every last illiterate one of them! Author Unknown -------- SOURCE -------- By Barbara A. Brown. Both pieces were forwarded to me via email. ----------- © 1997, 1999, 2002 Lotus D. Cirilo -- All Rights Reserved Do not copy or extract data or photos, except for use in your personal research. Contact me lotus@cirilo.net if you have any questions. TERMS OF USE You may freely link to this Web site. You may view, download, and print material from this site only for your personal, noncommercial use. You may not post material from this site on another web site or on a computer network without express written permission. You may not use this site or information found at this site (including the names and email addresses of those who submitted information) for selling or promoting products or services, soliciting clients, or any other commercial purpose. ------------------ (c) 2002, All rights reserved. Tarver-Gen, Lotus D Cirilo http://www.tarver-genealogy.net/funstuff/fun_relativeswho.txt