---------- > From: Violet Guy <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Subject: "WISH LIST" > Date: Wednesday, February 17, 1999 1:44 AM > > The "I WANT" was posted on another list. I thought that you might enjoy > it. > > > ********************** > > "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!!! > > > > ==== OREGON Mailing List ==== > > > > > >