I've always loved history and started researching my family tree back in high school as a school assignment. I'm excited to find findagrave.com and hopeful I can be a helpful contributor. Thank you to all the contributors out there who have made my researching so much easier, simply by adding a memorial and a picture from a cemetery. You may copy any pictures I have uploaded here for use with genealogy research. Email if you'd like a larger image.

Names in my family that I'm researching: Wood, Mevich/Maibach, Frisbey, Johnson, Nelson, Knudsen, Rasmussen, Bowden, Freeland, Gunder, Vallender, Norling, Allen, McGuire, Mallory.......

The Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest;
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out
On polished, marbled 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 if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come to visit you.

Author: Walter Butler Palmer 1906

I've always loved history and started researching my family tree back in high school as a school assignment. I'm excited to find findagrave.com and hopeful I can be a helpful contributor. Thank you to all the contributors out there who have made my researching so much easier, simply by adding a memorial and a picture from a cemetery. You may copy any pictures I have uploaded here for use with genealogy research. Email if you'd like a larger image.

Names in my family that I'm researching: Wood, Mevich/Maibach, Frisbey, Johnson, Nelson, Knudsen, Rasmussen, Bowden, Freeland, Gunder, Vallender, Norling, Allen, McGuire, Mallory.......

The Ancestor

Your tombstone stands among the rest;
Neglected and alone.
The name and date are chiseled out
On polished, marbled 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 if you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find this spot,
And come to visit you.

Author: Walter Butler Palmer 1906