"Happy is the man who recalls his ancestors with pride, who treasures the story of their greatness, tells the tales of their heroic lives, and with joy too full for speech, realizes that fate has linked him with a race of goodly men."

~Goethe


My name is Greta and I've been researching my family history for about two years. The more time I've spent researching my family history the more I LOVE it! It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle and it's so exciting to make all the pieces fit.

I have recently joined the DAR as I discovered two Patriots of the American Revolution going straight back the Johnson line from my mother....and more Patriots going all the way back to Captain John Johnson (my 10th Great-grandfather) who came to American with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630 and who was the Keeper of Munitions for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And I must not forget his son, Captain Isaac Johnson, who died in "The Great Swamp Fight" which was termed the bloodiest battle in Colonial history.

I recently found these two poems on several sites...they are beautiful and accurately describe how I feel, and how many people feel, I'm sure, about the importance of genealogy and this website!

"The Chosen"

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."



Dear 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 visit you.

(This poem was written in 1906 by Walter Butler Palmer)

"Happy is the man who recalls his ancestors with pride, who treasures the story of their greatness, tells the tales of their heroic lives, and with joy too full for speech, realizes that fate has linked him with a race of goodly men."

~Goethe


My name is Greta and I've been researching my family history for about two years. The more time I've spent researching my family history the more I LOVE it! It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle and it's so exciting to make all the pieces fit.

I have recently joined the DAR as I discovered two Patriots of the American Revolution going straight back the Johnson line from my mother....and more Patriots going all the way back to Captain John Johnson (my 10th Great-grandfather) who came to American with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630 and who was the Keeper of Munitions for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And I must not forget his son, Captain Isaac Johnson, who died in "The Great Swamp Fight" which was termed the bloodiest battle in Colonial history.

I recently found these two poems on several sites...they are beautiful and accurately describe how I feel, and how many people feel, I'm sure, about the importance of genealogy and this website!

"The Chosen"

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."



Dear 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 visit you.

(This poem was written in 1906 by Walter Butler Palmer)