Retired for a few years and loving it,but lots of time on my hands. So, family tree research helps fill the void. I'm researching names Ford, Myers,Lane, Rooks, Ruark, Holden, Gober, Standard,Standiford, West, Harned, Cranor, Taylor.

Thank you to all of you who are pleasant and courteous. You are the best! FAG is my drama free zone. No nonsense or snowflakes allowed. I'm not a fan of nitpickers and whiners. Get a life and enjoy it before someone creates a memorial page for you.

There is a dash between birth and death.
I read that once, and subsequent visits to cemeteries gained a new level of empathy, wonder, and appreciation of life. It is imagined the adventure lived in the dash carved into a marble headstone, whose owner lived during the civil war. Calculating the ages became routine... and shocking. Some dashes were shorter. Imagined was a sprint. The reality was probably much less. Just food for thought.

I ran across this interesting law in the state
of Texas. Chapter 711.041 states, "the public has a right to ingress/egress to all cemeteries
for the purposes of visit". That is also to say that once "a cemetery...ALWAYS a cemetery" (if bodies remain in the ground). Furthermore, Texas law Chapter 711.052 makes violations of
Chapter 711.041 a Class A misdemeanor. Food for
thought as you and I go out to research cemeteries and run into individuals with an attitude. One might also consider leaving a coin on the grave marker visited. Tradition suggest a penny is left to show one has visited and the person is not forgotten. A nickel is left behind to show they went to school together or trained together in the military. A dime represents they worked together or served together in the military. Lastly, a quater is placed if the person was there when they died or were killed.

We are the chosen. 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. 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 I am, and why 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 the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. 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 they and they are the sum of who we are. 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 my 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 restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."

by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."

Retired for a few years and loving it,but lots of time on my hands. So, family tree research helps fill the void. I'm researching names Ford, Myers,Lane, Rooks, Ruark, Holden, Gober, Standard,Standiford, West, Harned, Cranor, Taylor.

Thank you to all of you who are pleasant and courteous. You are the best! FAG is my drama free zone. No nonsense or snowflakes allowed. I'm not a fan of nitpickers and whiners. Get a life and enjoy it before someone creates a memorial page for you.

There is a dash between birth and death.
I read that once, and subsequent visits to cemeteries gained a new level of empathy, wonder, and appreciation of life. It is imagined the adventure lived in the dash carved into a marble headstone, whose owner lived during the civil war. Calculating the ages became routine... and shocking. Some dashes were shorter. Imagined was a sprint. The reality was probably much less. Just food for thought.

I ran across this interesting law in the state
of Texas. Chapter 711.041 states, "the public has a right to ingress/egress to all cemeteries
for the purposes of visit". That is also to say that once "a cemetery...ALWAYS a cemetery" (if bodies remain in the ground). Furthermore, Texas law Chapter 711.052 makes violations of
Chapter 711.041 a Class A misdemeanor. Food for
thought as you and I go out to research cemeteries and run into individuals with an attitude. One might also consider leaving a coin on the grave marker visited. Tradition suggest a penny is left to show one has visited and the person is not forgotten. A nickel is left behind to show they went to school together or trained together in the military. A dime represents they worked together or served together in the military. Lastly, a quater is placed if the person was there when they died or were killed.

We are the chosen. 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. 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 I am, and why 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 the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. 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 they and they are the sum of who we are. 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 my 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 restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before."

by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."