RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: diana2646 on Tuesday 01 January 13 13:09 GMT (UK)
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Hi everyone, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I found this piece online by an unknown author and it moved me to tears when I read it as it evoked so many feelings that I have had myself. Hope you all like it.
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 have gone before. 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.
It goes beyond just documenting the facts. It goes to who I am, and why 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. 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 call those, young and old, to step up and put flesh on the bones.
By an unknown author.
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That is a moving piece and written from a standpoint that I'd never considered :)
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This is well written..
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Um, I'm afraid that I find that a bit mawkish. :P
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A lovely piece, Diana. Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure about being 'called', I just love doing it & imagining the bygone days of my ancestors. Plus, it satisfies that nosy side of me :D
Jane
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Hi Jane, I agree with you and I think it is true to say that you put the flesh back on the bones, the more you learn about your family and the things they did. Also, two years ago, I found the grave of my brother who died in 1936, age 8 months. He didn't have a memorial stone so my brother and I put together for one. He is buried in London, and I live in Lincolnshire but we made the trip to London after the stone was laid and I found it very emotional and I did cry - for the brother I had never met, but I also felt some of what my parents must have felt too, standing there in 1936, and how devastated they must have been all those years ago.
Yes, I do think you have to be a bit on the nosy side too!!!! I have found genealogy very addictive, but thankfully, not harmful to health!!
Diana
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Yes I agree my feeling are just like the unknown writer ,the feeling when you find that grave you have searched so hard to find and see the name etched in stone that was given to you down the line of ancestor,s or sit in a pew in an old church knowing your 3 or 4*great grandmother was baptized there and you feel the goose bumps and brush away the tears , then comes the pride when one of the family say,s how did you find out all that info ! on a lighter side you give thanks to RC helpful forum .
Happy New Year All.
Mrs Griff.
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Hi Mrs. Griff,
My feelings entirely! There is nothing like it! My brother always says - how did you find that out, and calls me 'The Detective. He doesn't realise that we all have a lot of help from forums like ROOTSCHAT, so I would like to say also - A Big Thank You to them one and all.
Diana
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Only harmful to housework, Diana ;D That's a very moving personal story about your baby brother. It is things like this that come as a by-product to our research. I know many a Rootschatter who has helped re-unite photographs, letters & the like to family members. That's a good thing & I'm happy to be a part of it :)
Jane
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Gosh--- that exactly expresses my feelings, someone in each generation needs to do it othewise our ancetors are lost or at best just names on a sheet of paper.
Thankyou for posting it. Happy New Year. Viktoria.
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I thought this sounded familiar. Some examples:
http://fibergenea.wordpress.com/genealogy/role-of-the-genealogist/
http://genforum.genealogy.com/englandcountry/messages/86585.html
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gypsysearch/
http://www.GenesReunited.co.uk/boards/board/general_topics/thread/832418
One of the above links said that this comes from a newsletter called "Sons of Norway" http://www.sonsofnorway2.com/home_newsletter.html If true, presumably it was translated from Norwegian. :)
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Yes Jane, very harmful to housework! If I get into looking for something, suddenly it's teatime and I think - good grief, it will have to be beans on toast!! It was as you say a very sad story about my brother, but I feel we have marked his short life now, and got a nice memorial stone for him. I often wonder how his life would have turned out, as my brother has done very well with his work and it has taken him all over the world, so it just makes you wonder.
You are right Viktoria, someone in each family needs to do the history and there was no one in my family who had done it at all. When I think about the stories that my parents used to tell me years ago, it keeps the family alive somehow. Mine all started with a little funeral card that my aunt gave me for my grandfather. He was only 40 when he died. He was a sergeant in the Met in London, and in 1917 several bombs dropped on Edgware Road, and he went in to help rescue people trapped in the basement. Consequently, there was some sort of gas escape and my granddad was gassed and taken to hospital. The gas he inhaled damaged his lungs and he died 8 years later. I found that he was on the Met Police Roll of Honour, and found his obit and all sorts of things about him. So that was how it started really.
Thanks Ruskie for sending the websites. I have had a look and it looks like, as you say, that it originated in Norway, although still not atributed to anyone in particular. At least I haven't infringed any copyright laws!!
Happy New Year to everyone.
Diana
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What a great piece and goes some way to explaining who we are!.
I set out on my journey just over a year ago compiling my Fathers tree as a Christmas Gift. I was aware that he was the youngest of nine children and his own father had died when my own Dad was only 10 years old. This left my Grandmother, in the 1930's, in a very difficult situation.
My Father, who unfortunately died in April 2012, only began to speak about his upbringing in his much later life but he seemed to gain some comfort from talking about it. I found myself being drawn to the very strong, determined characters that were discussed. Especially the females and consider that I am the product of their histories and life styles
I now consider my role to pass on the information to the next generation as well as some of the courage, optimism and hope that went into the making of me. At the moment my grandchildren appear to appreciate this but whether they are merely humouring "An Ancient" who knows?
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Hi, I set out in a similar type of way, as not long after I started my family history, my brother's 60th birthday was coming up and I compiled a book for him, of all that I had found out up until then. My father fought in World War II and luckily for me, he kept war diaries. They consisted of two books, about 150 pages in each, and it gave me an insight into him as a young man, and also what he went through. He also took lots of photos during the course of the war and had put them into an album, which he had made, from a shell casing. These are wonderful things to have in the family.
Your grandmother must have been a very determined and brave woman and you must be very proud of her. We probably won't ever be tested in the same way as our ancestors were, but it is good to think that we have inherited their qualities. There was a saying on my mother's side of the family, about which I was told by a recently found relative. She said that her mother used to say - the women in this family died with their boots on!
I would like to think that the work I have done will be carried on by future generations, although like you said, they listen with interest when I tell them about some new and exciting detail that I have found out, so I hope that they might aquire 'the addiction' as they get older!
Diana
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Some research was recently done re food and nutrition with regard to how children thrive.
Briefly it was decided that it was not so much what a child ate but in what atmosphere it was eaten.
A child of wealthy parents would have very good quality food but most probably would eat it ,up in the nursery, with the nanny and see their parents perhaps once a day .
Conversely a child of poor parents would have a rather poor diet but had more chance of eating in the presence of their parents in an atmosphere where love and caring were very evident .
It seems an oversimplification but my mother-in-law lived to over 100 and they were very poor indeed. One egg was shared between four children. However their parents were very loving and caring, their mother was a lovely woman and their father had stirling qualities which made family life full of love and fair discipline. M-in L never needed hospital treatment until just before she died.
There was a strong tradition of caring and it goes back at least four generations that mothers were cared for by daughters in their old age.
If you look at what poor specimens some of the royal family were, George V and George V1 were not robust men . They were not happy in childhood but they would have extremely good food and not know want like my M-in-L . but not be surrounded by the love she knew either.
I can see some truth in it and I think the women we research when we are doing our family history are pretty well all heroines,how they managed with so little and yet brought up honest hard working families. I`ve said it before so sorry to those who have seen this before but the poorer my family turn out to have been the prouder I am of them.
Viktoria.
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An interesting take on the subject Viktoria.
[That implies that all our desperately poor ancestors were all loving and caring parents, which I very much doubt would be so, and the wealthy were not? :-\]
I also think that no matter how much love there was in a family, a very poor diet could not sustain.
Sometimes I think we like to see our ancestors through rose coloured glasses :)
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That is very interesting Viktoria, about the research that was done. They do say that 'laughing' is the best medicine and can lift you out of all sorts of things. I have been watching the programme which has been on over the last three weeks about Queen Victoria and her children. I was quite shocked by the way she treated them and it seemed that their lives were mostly very miserable and they must have felt terribly unloved by their mother. As you say, they were mostly very sickly children. She never seemed to have any praise for them and treated them like they were someone else's children and not hers. I know it doesn't apply in all cases, but I think there is a lot of truth in what you say and there was a lot more love in the poorer families.
I know even in my generation, that my mother went without, for mine and my brother's benefit, although I never realised it at the time. The culture now, of putting family into home's when they get sick and old, (which would never have happened years ago) is a terrible one. In countries like Italy for example, it doesn't happen. The elderly parents are cared for at home.
In general I think that the women were the ones who held things together in the family. I know the men had to go out to work, and work very very hard in most cases, but the women had the job of bringing up the children, dealing with everything else and trying to eek out the meagre amount of money that they had.
My great, great grandparents had 14 children and I am full of admiration for them and how they must have coped, especially in those days. That is one reason I have tried, in my family history, to bring their story to life.
Diana
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Yes Ruskie, and that`s why I felt it was an oversimplification.
Nothing is quite as black and white as that but you can see that a reasonable ,basic diet would do a loved child more good than a would a rich diet for an unhappy emotionally neglected child.
I can`t remember who did the research but it was on the radio and I think in the newspaper.
There are always exceptions to the rule, and we can all think of many but there must have been sufficient examples to cause someone to do the research in the first place .
It is also often( but granted not always) the case that a pessimist has more illness than a happy outgoing personality. What it all tells us is that we humans are a mysterious lot!
Diana,I was so full of admiration for my grandparents, especially my G.Mother ----twelve children and adopted another 4--- What a wonderful woman ,so loved and respected by her children and that was because she was all for them, she had no life of her own but was content to submerge herself in their needs. When older they tried to get her to do things for herself and she did start to visit the local cinema, matinees, but was always back to have their tea ready.She never saw it as sacrifice but her duty. From 1883 when her first baby was born until 1932 when she died it was pretty well all children and babies. Her last born 1910, but then she adopted the four more ,the youngest only about two.Almost 50 years of looking after others. Deserved a medal .Instead got a sanctuary lamp that never went out until the church was demolished in the 1960`s.
Cheerio Viktoria.
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Yes Viktoria and. Diana I for one agree with what you said , even today I can tell when children sit down together for meals as my daughter her husband and 3 boys do it makes for a much happier household be it only egg & chips on waiting for payday day lol ,compared to another side of my family who never eat together there is a marked difference in behaviour and attitude . I too had a great grandmother who had 15 children including two sets of twins and she helped on the farm and was a kind and gentle woman so family says and was much loved and had a brilliant tribute written about her on her death which I have and cherish .she also had her sadness her first born in 1859 left for the USA in 1892 never to be seen or heard of again she sent my grandfather to the USA in 1896 to look for him to no avail , then her last born in 1880 died in 1915 10 days after arriving to fight in France and is buried out there . I think all family,s should be proud to document all things they know about their ancestor,s how ever small or trivial it might seem .
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My late M-in-L, we have not heard them yet- but she recorded many of her memories on a tape recorder. It is perhaps too soon to hear her voice. My O.H is waiting until his sister, who cared for his mother is ready to play them .That will be an emotional milestone.
How I wish my mum`s voice was taped. I can still remember it even though she died in Nov 1957 . ---When I had misbehaved " Oh Viktoria", just quietly and sadly. It filled me with shame and went home more than a smack would have done.
And of course has lasted much much longer!!!! I think we ought to record what we know of days gone by. Already we oldies can see glaring errors and anachronisms on T.V.programmes. These will be acepted as accurate in the future. Viktoria.
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I am so glad that I put that piece on Rootschat, as it has generated so many wonderful stories about your respective families and it has been a pleasure to read to them.
It certainly will be a very emotional experience for you Viktoria, to listen to the tapes of your Mother in law. I have some tapes of my aunt, my dad's sister. I was very close to her and she moved to the U.S.A. in the sixties and rather than write letters, she used to send me a tape. I have still got them and play them from time to time, and it's as though she is there with me. I have quite a few films of my granddaughter, as I was lucky enough to own a video camera, which I didn't have when my son was small. A friend of ours filmed our wedding in 1967, and it was on old film, so a few years ago, I had it transferred on to a video tape, and it was very emotional to be able to watch my mum and dad on it, as they have both been dead for nearly 40 years now. How lucky we are to have these 'gadgets' nowadays, and can record all these events and show them to future generations.
Diana
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Thankyou Diana, it has been lovely reading the posts hasn`t it.
I always feel sad when I see family albums on car boot sales or in antiques centres.They take up so little room and who knows who of future generations may not value them . I`d give a lot to see photographs of quite a few of my ancestors .
Cheerio and thanks again. Viktoria.
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I wonder if this site is the source of that quote?
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=mr&MRid=46976690
Whoever said it first it certainly is worth sharing. Thanks
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Hi, that is interesting! Earlier on in this thread, Ruskie posted some possible sources from Norway, so I don't really know.
I just know one thing, it is a beautiful piece and has generated so many lovely stories from the people who have contributed to this thread, and so I am very glad I put it on here!
Diana