I believe I may have met you a few years ago at a family reunion in W.Va. Your comments are very interesting. I've never had any doubt that the root of the problem of inaccurate and incomplete information in obituaries is with the families, which should tell list members some things about unqualified trust of that information. But some funeral homes would tilt toward pleasing the customer rather than get the facts right. In my case, if we thought something were true that was not presented, we would ask the funeral home and then go directly to the family. So I understand the funeral home problem. I have been told myself that they don't want a certain wife or a certain marriage mentioned. Patsy Hamrick-Weikart, my good friend and a descendant of Kelly Ben and Naomi Mollohan Hamrick, points out that there is an infant buried in the Hamrick Cemetery atop Morton Hill in Webster Springs, WV. He is identified as the son of Eli "Rimfire" Hamrick but never is mentioned otherwise as the legendary accounts of Rimfire grow and grow and take on Paul Bunyan stature. Furthermore, there never was much mention of his marriage. Or that in a contest for the state Senate, he was defeated six to one. The accounts prefer, "Rimfire was a candidate for the West Virginia Legislature." Patsy's grandfather and Rimfire were brothers. I'm not trying to pick on the nature lover. He was articulate in a homespun sort of way. And he was an environmentalist and lover of nature before its time. We not only have the problem of ordinary people believing more of what they want to believe than what is true. And we compound the problem when we set it to writing. But to know him is to know the detail: He could go anywhere in the woods but got lost in Clarksburg, WV, a 25,000 city with only a couple of highways running through it. I am not personally immune from the idea of withholding information.. I have an item ‹ not a fact of genealogical importance ‹ that I believe would have embarrassed close relatives that I do not mention. I hope to get the courage to do it some day but I haven't yet. Isn't that human nature? My belief is that it is but it is not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. dhamrick@neo.rr.com Dan Hamrick 402 23rd Street NW Canton OH 44709 Phone and fax: 330-454-2376 ---------- >From: "Richard M. Hamrick, Jr." <rhamrick@cfw.com> >To: "'HAMRICK,DANIEL'" <dhamrick@neo.rr.com> >Subject: RE: [HAMRICK-L] Dot Deloris Hamrick Hancock >Date: Sun, Jan 16, 2000, 2:27 PM > >Dan: As a funeral director of 52 active years, now retired, we always >felt it was tougher to get information into obits. Here is Staunton, VA, >all funeral homes in the area, take copies, hard or otherwise, to the two >papers for them to run. We have not had many problems, mostly caused by >families wanting information in the obits, which are free up to 10 column >inches, which the the paper's policy says is a a no-no. > On the other hand, we never gave out information to anyone without the >family's permission, except for service times and not that if the family >was having a private funeral. It was amazing the immediate family >relationships that exist. "He was my first wife's uncle's cousin's >husband. I"m close family". That is not an exact quote of someone, but an >example of what we heard, probably every couple of weeks. > I have enjoyed the discussions of the Hamrick chatroom. I once spent a >couple of hundred dollars with a genealogist in the general area of >Philadelphia, who could find no reference to George or his sons. At any >rate I enjoy them. > >Dick Hamrick >Staunton, VA 24402 >