Why genealogy?

from my email :
snip

I wondered if you would be interested in this which came to me

through another site, translated, from someone in Norway.

"We are the chosen. My feeling is that in each family there is someonewho 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 those who went before know and approve.

To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe.

All tribes have one.We have been called as if it were in our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us "Tell our story." So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before and cried?I have lost count.

How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? It goes beyond documenting the facts. It goes to who I am and why I do the things I do.

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 hardshipsand losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a nation. It goes to deep understanding that they were doing it for us, 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 them and they are us.

I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation, to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.

That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls both young and old to step up and put flesh on the bones."

I have always had this desire to follow my family history,

even when I was quite small. snipped