Every Genealogist can relate to these.......

• Undocumented genealogy is mythology.
• My ancestors must have been in a "Witness Protection Program"
• My family tree must have been used for firewood!
• Whoever said "Seek and ye shall find" was not a genealogist
• Am I the only person up my tree? --- Seems like it
• I'm not stuck.......I'm ancestrally challenged
• I researched my family tree....apparently I don't exist!
• Why are there so many gnarled limbs on my family tree?
• I'm stuck in my family tree.....and I can't get down!
• My husband has started calling cemeteries "Ancestor Farms"
• To a genealogist, EVERYTHING is relative!

GENEALOGY POX WARNING!!
(Author Unknown)
Very contagious to adults.
SYMPTOMS:
Continual complaint as to need for names, dates and places. Patient has blank
expression, sometimes deaf to spouse and children. Has no taste for work of
any kind, except feverishly looking through records at libraries and
courthouses. Has compulsion to write letters, swears at mailman when he
does not leave mail. Frequents strange places such as cemeteries, ruins and
remote desolate country areas. Makes secret night calls, hides phone bills
from spouse, mumbles to self, has strange far-away look in eyes.
NO KNOWN CURE!

TREATMENT:
Medication is useless. Disease is not fatal but gets progressively worse.
Patient should attend genealogy workshops and subscribe to genealogy
magazines and be given a quiet corner in the house where he/she can be
alone.

REMARKS:
The usual nature of this disease is..the sicker the patient gets, the more he/she
enjoys it!!

Murphy's Law

• The will you need is in a safe onboard the Titantic
• You finally find the wedding record for your gggrandfather only to discover he married Mary SMITH whose father was John SMITH and mother was Mary JONES!
• You have finally found the information you needed to solve the family mystery you have been working on for 2 years and your elderly aunt says " I could have told you that!"
• You find an old family photo album and upon close examination, there are no names on the pictures.
• You learn that your great grandmother's family bible (passed down through the family for 3 generations) was sold at an estate sale in New York City.
• You find  your family in the census and write to the county where they lived for 40 years, only to receive a letter stating all the county records burned.
• You learn there is a county history on microfilm of the county your ancestors originated.  It has 16000 pages and is not indexed.
• The public ceremony in which your distinguished ancestor participated and at which the platform collapsed under him, turned out to be a hanging.

Where is that guy Murphy anyway??

I really do have a few things to say to  him!

Ever wonder why you can't make heads or tails out of the census?...............

Ocupayshun, Cencus Taker

"I am a cencus takers for the city of
Bufflow. Our city has groan very fast in resent
yeers & now in 1865, it has become a hard & time
consuming job to count all the peephill. There
are not many that con do this werk, as it is
nesessarie to have a ejucashun, wich a lot of
pursons steal don not have. Anuther atribeart
needed for this job is god speling, for meny of
the peephill to be counted can hardle speek inglish, let alon spel there names!"

Genealogists say the funniest things!

These quotes are from copies of actual correspondence received by the

Family History Department of the LDS Church:

My Grandfather died at the age of 3.

Will you please send me the name of my first wife? I have forgotten her name.

We lost our Grandmother, will you please send us a copy?

The wife of #22 could not be found. Somebody suggested that she might have been stillborn - what do you think?

Will you send me a list of all the Dripps in your library?

Further research will be necessary to eliminate one of the parents.

He and his daughter are listed as not being born.

I would like to find out if I have any living relatives or dead relatives or ancestors in my family.

A 14-year-old boy wrote: "I do not want you to do my research for me. Will you please send me all of the material on the Welch line, in the US, England and Scotland countries? I will do the research.

How does that relation go?....................................

Many many years ago, When I was twenty-three,
I got married to a widow, Who was pretty as could be.

This widow had a grown-up daughter, Who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, And soon the two were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law, And changed my very life.
My daughter was my mother, For she was my father's wife.

To complicate the matters worse, Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father; Of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became, A brother-in-law to dad.

And so became my uncle, Though it made me very sad.

For if he was my uncle, Then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter, Who, of course, was my step-mother.

Father's wife then had a son, Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandson, For he was my daughter's son.

My wife is now my mother's mother, And it makes me blue.
Because, although she is my wife, She's my grandmother too.

If my wife is my grandmother, Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it, It simply drives me wild.

For now I have become, The strangest case you ever saw.
As the husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.

"I'm My Own Grandpa" - Lonzo & Oscar
Composed by Moe Jaffe & Dwight Latham.
Recorded by many people, including Guy Lombardo, Phil Harris, Jo Stafford
("I'm My Own Grandmaw"), Homer & Jethro, and Ray Stevens.

Just for fun

My family tree needs more wood and less sap.

My family tree must be a pecan because it is full of nuts.

Old genealogist never die, they just lose their census.

Genealogy is not fatal, but it is a grave disease.

Heredity: Everyone believes in it until their children act like fools!

"Sure, a real job would be nice, but it would interfere with my genealogy!"

So many dead people! So little time!

Who's in charge of washing the Family Group Sheets?

WARNING

QUARANTINE

The inhabitants of this place have been stricken with

GENEALOGY FEVER

A Deadly and Infectious Disease

Symptoms: Notepapers stuffed in pockets and files; heart
palpitations at the sight of gravestones and old trunks
filled with letters; bloodshot eyes from excessive microfilm
exposure; erratic speech patterns punctuated with pilgrims and
princes; cold sweat upon the arrival of the daily mail.

INCURABLE

Okay...c'mon admit it.  Haven't we all felt like this???

NEXT GENERATION GENEALOGISTS
A modern mother is explaining to her little girl about pictures in the family photo album. "This is the geneticist with your surrogate mother and here's your sperm donor and your father's clone. This is me holding you when you were just a frozen embryo. The lady with the very troubled look on her face is your aunt, she's the family genealogist."

I'm sure I have run into a few descendants of this family

on the genealogy mailing lists.  How bout you??

The BICKERSONS

Ima Bickerson married R.U. Crabby years ago........

Their children -

Discontented Devan

Erritable Ella

Grouchy Gerta

Unhappy Ulam

Patience and Respect (twins) died off early

THIS FAMILY  SPREAD  IT'S SEED COAST TO COAST

A Genealogist's wish list............

I WANT:
I want ancestors with names like Rudimentary Montagnard or
Melchizedick von Steubenhoffmannschild or Spetznatz
Gianfortoni, not William Brown or John Hunter or Mary Abbott.

I want ancestors who could read and write, had their children
baptized in recognized houses of worship, went to school,
purchased land, left detailed wills (naming a huge extended
family as legatees), had their photographs taken once a year --
subsequently putting said pictures in elaborate isinglass frames
annotated with calligraphic inscriptions, and carved voluble and
informative inscriptions in their headstones.

I want relatives who managed to bury their predecessors in
established, still-extant (and indexed) cemeteries.

I want family members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the
military as officers and who served in strategically important (and
well documented) skirmishes.

I want relatives who served as councilmen, schoolteachers,
county clerks and town historians.

I want relatives who 'religiously' wrote in the family Bible,
journaling every little event And detailing the familial relationship
of every visitor.

In the case of immigrant progenitors, I want them to have arrived
only in those years wherein passenger lists were indexed by
National Archives, and I want them to have applied for
citizenship, and to have done so only in those jurisdictions
which have since established indices.

I want relatives who were patriotic and clubby, who joined every
patrimonial society they could find, who kept diaries, and listed
all their addresses, who had paintings made of their horses, and
who dated every piece of paper they touched.

I want forebears who were wealthy enough to afford, and to
keep for generations, the tribal homestead, and who left all the
aforementioned pictures and diaries and journals intact in the
library.

But most of all, I want relatives I can find!!!

© Barbara A. Brown
*Ms. Brown's "I Want" article was originally posted in 1994 to
the National Genealogical Conference, FIDO bulletin board
forum.
http://www.iigs.org/newsletter/9808news/genhum.htm.en
(Thanks, Barbara, for permission to use your great poem!)

"God, why did you give me Smith, Jones and Walker families?????

More Funnies

Limericks & Poems

Funny Names in Census Records

The Good Ole Days??

Rules For Our Ancestors

Graveyard Humor

Genealogy Funny Papers Start Page

Brenda's Branches

Genealogy Search Engines

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