LOL, Me too. If only it were true ;) -----Original Message----- From: Ray Brown <[email protected]> To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Date: Monday, March 15, 1999 9:09 PM Subject: [DECKER-L] I WANT >"I WANT" > >I want ancestors with names like Rudimentary Montagnard or Melchizenick >Von >Steubenhoffmannschild or Spetznatz Giafortoni, not William Brown or John >Hunter >or Mary Abbott. > >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. > >I want relatives who managed to bury their predecessors in established, >still-extant (and indexed) cemeteries. > >I want family members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the military as > >officers and who served in strategically important (and well documented) > >skirmishes. > >I want relatives who served as councilmen, schoolteachers, county clerks >and >town historians. > >I want relatives who `religiously' wrote in the family Bible, journaling >every >little event and detailing the familial relationship of every visitor. > >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. > >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. > >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. > >But most of all, I want relatives I can FIND!!! > > > >