* Forwarded (from: GENEALOGY_FMY) by Stephen Hayes using timEd/2 1.10.y2k.
* Originally from John Rampling (8:8/2002) to All.
* Original dated: Mon Jun 23, 05:04

From: "John Rampling" 

Thank you all for your replies.

It has taken me fifteen years to accumulate some two hundred names on my
family tree. As I said in my original post, overnight I have discovered at
least two thousand names via the Internet, and possibly ten thousand!

Imagine my excitement! It has quickly faded. The two thousand (or ten
thousand) of these new name will never really exist for me. They are just
names, collected by the genealogical equivalent of train spotters who care
more for the number of 'ticks' on their list than their own living heritage.

I know every one of my two hundred names personally. Although he or she may
have died hundreds of years ago, I have stood and looked down at their
weed-overgrown grave, seen the stone-built cottage where they lived, or read
the handwriting of the priest who held a tiny child in his arms on the day
of their baptism on a Yorkshire hillside. I don't think of them as my
ancestors but as my brothers and sisters.

John







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 - Origin: ntlworld News Service (8:8/2002) 

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