michaelpipe
09-06-2008, 8:47 AM
NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS TO CONFUSE DESCENDANTS UNDERTAKING GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH.
It is New Year's Eve 1852 and Henry HYDENWELL sits at his desk by candlelight. He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to writes his New Year's resolutions.
1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his family name at least three different ways within the same document.
2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same proper names that my ancestors have used for at least six generations in a row.
3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document.
4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church -- either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will be baptized at an age of at least two, maybe more, and maybe twice at different parishes.
5. I resolve to move to a new village at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions.
6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and villages where no vital records are maintained or where the church (and its records) burns down every few years.
7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.
8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.
9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary and again make no mention of her family name.
10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer?
11. I resolve to leave lots of family photographs, but never to inscribe the names or relationships of those in the pictures.
12. In the above manner, I will enshrine myself and my progeny to the whims of all those descendants who wish me to be more like they believe they are.
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It is New Year's Eve 1852 and Henry HYDENWELL sits at his desk by candlelight. He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to writes his New Year's resolutions.
1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his family name at least three different ways within the same document.
2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same proper names that my ancestors have used for at least six generations in a row.
3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document.
4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church -- either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will be baptized at an age of at least two, maybe more, and maybe twice at different parishes.
5. I resolve to move to a new village at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions.
6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and villages where no vital records are maintained or where the church (and its records) burns down every few years.
7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.
8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.
9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary and again make no mention of her family name.
10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer?
11. I resolve to leave lots of family photographs, but never to inscribe the names or relationships of those in the pictures.
12. In the above manner, I will enshrine myself and my progeny to the whims of all those descendants who wish me to be more like they believe they are.
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