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Come on in!
Take some time to relax.
Have a cup of tea, kick off your shoes and enjoy.
Laughter is the best medicine and we want you to be healthy.
So sit down a spell and have a laugh or a little chuckle while your here.
Genealogical ADD
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It is New Year's Eve 1852 and an ancestor sits at his desk by candlelight.
He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to write his New Year's resolutions:
1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his name at least three different ways within the same document. I resolve to give the appearance of being extremely well-educated in the coming year.
2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same names that my ancestors have used for six generations in a row.
3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document.
4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church -- either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will not be baptized at all or will be baptized by an itinerant minister who keeps no records.
5. I resolve to move to a new town, new county, or new state at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions.
6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and towns where no vital records are maintained or where the courthouse burns down every few years.
7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.
8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.
9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary.
10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer
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YOU KNOW YOU ARE AN ADDICTED GENEALOGIST WHEN.....
..you brake for libraries.
..you get locked in a library overnight and you don't even notice.
..you hyper-ventillate at the sight on an old cemetery.
..you'd rather browse in a cemetery than a shopping mall.
..you think every home should have a microfilm reader.
..you'd rather read census schedules than a good book.
..you know every town clerk in your state by name.
..town clerks lock the doors when they see you coming.
..you are more interested in what happened in 1895 than 1995.
..you store your clothes under the bed and your closet is carefuly stacked with notebooks and journals.
..Mitchell, Davis, and Tenney are household names, but you can't remember what you call the dog.
..you can pinpoint Harrietsham, Hawkhurst, and Kent on a map of England, but can't locate Topeka, Kansas.
..ALL your correspondence begins "Dear Cousin".
..you've traced every one of your ancestral lines back to Adam and Eve, have it fully documented, and still don't want to quit.
More of
"You Know You Are Addicted To Genealogy When......."
Your idea of a fun vacation includes a library, courthouse and a couple of cemeteries.
Your dream vacation is to spend a week at the LDS Library, in Salt Lake City.
You can answer all of the queries on Genforum.
You receive 100 e-mails a day and 99 of them are from Roots-L mailing lists.
You have your own set of keys to the local family history center and the employees think you work there.
There's not one person on your Christmas card list that you have actually met, although they all have the same last name.
You introduce your children as your descendants.
You begin referring to cemeteries as ancestor farms and headstones as concrete evidence.
(Courtesy of Terry Craig)
Genealogy: Where you confuse the dead and irritate the living.
From "Dear Abby"
Dear Abby: I have always wanted to have my family history traced,
but I can't afford to spend a lot of money to do it. Any suggestions?
~ Sam in California ~
Dear Sam: Yes. Run for public office.
(Courtesy of Terry Craig)
There was a great loss today in the entertainment world.
The man who wrote the song "Hokey Pokey" has died.
What was really horrible is that they had trouble putting the body in the casket.
They'd put his left leg in... well, you know the rest.
(Courtesy of Terry Craig)
I think my ancestors had several "bad heir" days.
I used to have a life, then I started doing genealogy.
I'd rather look for dead people than have 'em look for me!
I'm always late. My ancestors arrived on the Juneflower!
I'm not sick, I've just got fading genes.
I'm not stuck, I'm ancestrally challenged.
I'm searching for myself; Have you seen me?
I'm stuck in my family tree, and I can't get down!
The answer to one problem, leads to two more!
It's hard to believe that someday I'll be an ancestor
It's 2012. Do you know where your great-grandparents were?
Jeanealogy: the study of LEVIS and WRANGLERS.
Many a family tree needs trimming.
My ancestors must be in a witness protection program!
My family coat of arms ties at the back.....is that normal?
My family tree is a few branches short!
My family tree must have been used for firewood!
Only a Genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.
Remember, undocumented genealogy is mythology.
"Shh! Be vewy, vewy quiet...I'm hunting forebearwas," Elmer Fudd.
Snobs talk as if they had begotten their own ancestors!
That's strange; half my ancestors are WOMEN!
That's the problem with the gene pool: No lifeguard!
The gene pool could use a little chlorine!
They've said you are the fertilizer of your family tree!
To a genealogist, EVERYTHING is relative!
Try genealogy. You can't get fired and you can't quit!
What do you mean my Birth Certificate expired?
What do you mean my family tree has root rot!
Whoever said "seek and ye shall find" was NOT a genealogist!
Yikes! My genes are faded and full of holes!
As Long As We ARE REMEMBERED We NEVER Die.
A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.
A family tree can wither if nobody tends it's roots.
A miser is hard to live with, but makes a fine ancestor.
A new cousin a day keeps the boredom away.
Alright! Everybody out of the genetic pool!
Always willing to share my ignorance...
Am I the only person up my tree - seems like it.
Any family tree produces some lemons, nuts and bad apples!
Biochemists wear designer genes.
Climbing my family tree was fun until the nuts appeared!
Every family tree has some sap in it.
Everybody wants to be on the Mayflower.
Cleaning out the gene pool, one at a time.
FLOOR: (n) The place for storing your priceless genealogy records.
Genealogists are like monkeys, always in the trees.
Genealogists do it generation after generation....
Old genealogists never die, they just lose their census.
Genealogists live in the past lane.
Genealogy is like Hide & Seek: They Hide & I Seek!
Genealogy: Chasing your own tale!
Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.
Heredity: Everyone believes in it until their children act like fools!
I shook my family tree, a bunch of nuts fell out.
Can a first cousin, once removed, return?
Cemetery: (n) A marble orchard not to be taken for granite.
Crazy.... is a relative term in MY family.
Genealogy: It's all relative in the end anyway.
I trace my family history so I will know who to blame.
It's hard to be humble with ancestors like mine!
Searching for lost relatives? Win the Lottery!
Do I even WANT ancestors? Some I found I wish I could lose.
Friends come and go, but relatives tend to accumulate.
Genealogists do it in the library.
Genealogists never die, they just loose their roots.
Genealogy: A hay stack full of needles. It's the threads I need.
Genealogy: Collecting dead relatives and sometimes a live cousin!
I think my family tree is a few branches short of full bloom.
Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.
Research: What I'm doing, when I don't know what I'm doing.
Take nothing but ancestors, leave nothing but records.
Theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.
(Courtesy of Terry Craig)
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MURPHY WAS AN OPTIMIST! HE KNEW THAT ANYTHING THAT CAN GO WRONG ~ WILL GO WRONG!!
MURPHY'S LAW OF GENEALOGY STATES THAT:
The records you need for your family history were in the courthouse that burned.
John, son of Thomas, the immigrant whom your relatives claim as the immigrant ancestor, died on board ship at the age of twelve.
The public ceremony, in which your distinguished ancestor participated when the platform collapsed, turned out to be a hanging.
Records show that the grandfather, whom the family boasted, "He read the Bible at four years and graduated from college at sixteen," was at the foot of his class.
Your grandmother's maiden name for which you've searched for years, was on an old letter in a box in the attic all the time.
When at last you solved the mystery of the skeleton in the closet, your tight-lipped spinster aunt claims, "I could have told you that all the time."
You never asked your father about his family because you weren't interested in genealogy while he was still alive.
The family story your grandmother wrote for the family never got past the typist. She packed it away "somewhere" and promised to send you a copy, but never did.
The relative who had all the family photographs gave them to her daughter who had no interest in genealogy and no inclination to share.
A great-uncle changed his surname because he was teased in school. He moved away, left no address, and was never heard from again.
Brittle old newspapers containing the information you NEED, have fallen apart, right on the names, dates and places.
The only record you find for your great-grandfather is that his property was sold at a sheriff's sale for insolvency.
The portion of the index you need is continued in the next issue, only the publisher died prior to publication.
When you find the obituary for your grandmother, the information is garbled. Her name is exchanged with her daughter's, the whereabouts of her sons unknown, and the date of her father's birth indicates he was younger than she was.
The ONLY surname not found among the three billion in the LDS Archives is YOURS.
The Vital Records director sends you a negative reply, having just been insulted by a creep calling himself a genealogist.
The four-volume, 4,800 page history of the county where your great-grandfather lived is NOT indexed.
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THE COMMANDMENTS FOR NAMES
A "Tongue-In-Cheek" Viewpoint of a Family Researcher:
(1). Thou shalt name your male children: James, John, Joseph, Josiah, Abel, Richard, Thomas, William.
(2) Thou shalt name your female children: Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Maria, Sarah, Ida, Virginia, May.
(3) Thou shalt leave NO trace of your female children.
(4) Thou shalt, after naming your children from the above lists, call them by strange nicknames such as: Ike, Eli, Polly, Dolly, Sukey... making them difficult to trace.
(5) Thou shalt NOT use any middle names on any legal documents or census reports, and only where necessary, you may use only initials on legal documents.
(6) Thou shalt learn to sign all documents illegibly so that your surname can be spelled, or misspelled, in various ways: Hicks, Hix, Hixe, Hucks, Kicks or Robinson, Robertson, Robison, Roberson, Robuson, Robson, Dobson.
(7) Thou shalt, after no more then 3 generations, make sure that all family records are lost, misplaced, burned in a court house fire, or buried so that NO future trace of them can be found.
(8) Thou shalt propagate misleading legends, rumors, and vague innuendo regarding your place origination:
(A) you may have come from : Europe, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales...
(B) you may have American Indian ancestry of the ______ tribe...
(C) You may have descended from one of three brothers that came over from ______
(9) Thou shalt leave NO cemetery records, or headstones with legible names.
(10) Thou shalt leave NO family Bible with records of birth, marriages, or deaths.
(11) Thou shalt ALWAYS flip thy name around. If born James Albert, thou must make all the rest of thy records in the names of Albert, AJ, JA, AL, Bert, Bart, or Alfred.
(12) Thou must also flip thy parent's names when making reference to them, although "Unknown" or a blank line is an acceptable alternative.
(13) Thou shalt name at least 5 generations of males and dozens of their cousins with identical names in order to totally confuse researchers.
(Author unknown)
Additions to the original list:
(14) Thou shalt read "Unk Friend" (or whatever) as Uncle Friend (or whatever) and cause a new complete and totally unfounded branch (Fanny's your uncle, Robert's your aunt) in thousands of peoples' files. ~ Art Grady
(15) Thou shalt take in children from other families and without formally adopting them, change their last name to yours. ~ Ruth Koontz
(16) Don't forget Uncle or Aunt STILLBO ('stillbo' is used as abbrev. for child that was stillborn - I had a lady contact me and ask if I had any info on a specific surname for Stillbo). ~ Ruth sprowls
(17) Thou shalt name a child the same name as a previous deceased child. ~ Dave Fochtman
(18) Thou shalt name your child the same name as your brother's child that was born the same year. ~ Karen McCunney
(19) Thou shalt marry two women with the same first name. ~ "Soulmate".
(20) Thou shalt only marry a man named JONES if your surname is SMITH or vice versa. ~ Karen Hangsleben
(21) Immigration officials must change all immigrants names to reflect a spelling more convenient.
And - my favorite
(22) For immigration purposes, all countries can be lumped together (i.e. England, Scotland, Wales and both Irelands are simply England). ~ Theresa
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