poems

The Story Tellers.....

We are the chosen. My feelings are 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. To me, 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 cry 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 am I and why do I do the things I do? It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference and saying I can't 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, 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 a deep and immense 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. 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 their 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 put flesh on the bones.

(Unknown Author)

YOUR TOMBSTONE

Your tombstone stands among the rest, Neglected and alone.

The name and date are chiseled out...On old gray granite stone.

It reaches out to all who care...It is too late to mourn.

You did not know that I exist...You died...and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you...In flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse...Entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled...One hundred years ago

Spreads out among the ones you left...Who would have loved you so.

I wonder when you lived and loved; I wonder if you knew

That someday I would find this spot...And come and visit you.

Author Unknown

Strangers in the Box

Come, look with me inside this drawer,

In this box I’ve often seen,

At the pictures, black and white,

Faces proud, still serene.

I wish I knew the people,

These strangers in the box,

Their names and all their memories

Are lost among my socks.

I wonder what their lives were like,

How did they spend their days?

What about their special times?

I’ll never know their ways.

If only someone had taken time

To tell who, what, where, or when,

These faces of my heritage

Would come to life again.

Could this become the fate

Of the pictures we take today?

The faces and the memories

Someday to be passed away?

Make time to save your stories,

Seize the opportunity when it knocks,

Or someday you and yours could be

The strangers in the box.

~Unknown

Genealogical survey

Photo By Ernie King

Local genealogists Dennis and Carla Bagley examine a tombstone located in Warren Cemetery off of Route 68 in Hubbardston to learn more about the Kendall family history.

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[Many thanks to Mr. King and his employer's publication "The Gardner News" for thinking that genealogy was a worthwhile tidbit of local news. Published online the week of August 23, 2006.]