Template 246
Our Family's Journey Through Time
This is
text that goes with Cemetery Information. The following text is filler
text. You will use your text here. Donec neque urna, ultrices et sagittis
sit amet, cursus ut quam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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that goes with Ship's Manifest.The following text is filler text. You
will use your text here. Donec neque urna, ultrices et sagittis sit
amet, cursus ut quam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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text for this box.The following text is filler text. You will use your
text here. Donec neque urna, ultrices et sagittis sit amet, cursus ut
quam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
We are the
chosen. 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. 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. 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 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 the fathers fought and some died to make
and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they
were doing it for us.
It is of equal pride and love that our mothers
struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love
each one, as far back as we can reach. 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 they and they are the sum of
who we are. 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 my 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 restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before.
by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell
Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943.
If you have questions or problems with this site, email the County Coordinator. Please to not ask for specfic research on your family.