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 crying 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 cannot 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, they are 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.)
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