I'd settle for just one!!! > > "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!!!