Genealogy Chat

That's very well put and certainly true. Although most of my family are interested in anything I find out about our family history, none of them feel the need to find any facts themselves. The first grave I found after starting my family tree was that of my grandparents. Although this doesn't sound very far removed from me, and was in the town where I was born and grew up, they had both died long before I was born and I hadn't been aware of their grave before. I felt for the first time that I actually had grandparents. I've since found the graves of quite a few relatives and always feel a real connection to these long dead people. I just hope someone in the family feels the need to carry on with the research after I am gone. Kath. x

What's wrong with gardening? One of my ggg-grandfathers was a gardener.

Oh Derek, thats lovely, really touching and just how I feel too. When I stood in front of the graves stones of my GGPX4 - people who died 125 years before I was even born I still felt this love and closeness to them. And such a comforting feeling of the continuance of life. My sister though interested really cant see how I can feel this for people I have never met. I too stand and think, 'If only you knew how well we have all done, how we have survived and how we live in what you would think was aristocratic luxury - and its because of you that we are doing so' As you say, perhaps some of us are just called for the job of carrying on the family story.

We are the chosen, my feeling is that 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 those who went before know and approve, to me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead breathing life into all who, we owe our very existence to, We are the storytellers of the tribe, all tribes have one, We have been called as if it were in our genes, those who have gone before cry out to us; tell our story, so we do. 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 my 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.The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh, it goes to doing some thing 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, to build a life for their families, so 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. I tell the story of my family. It is up to the 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. Adapted from a newsletter called 'SONS OF NORWAY' Anyone agree with this, would welcome your comments,.