Subject: 10 Horrors of Genealogy

  Email Received from Kathie Bobbitt

How many have happened to you? I've had a few of these, myself...

  1) You learn that your great aunt's executor just sold her life's collection of family genealogical materials to a flea market dealer "Somewhere in New York City."

2) You finally find your great grandparents' wedding record and discover that the bride's father was named John Smith.

3) None of the pictures in your recently deceased grandmother's photo album have names written on them.

  4) You never asked your father about his family when he was alive because you weren't interested in genealogy then.

  5) You search ten years for your grandmother's maiden name to eventually find it on a letter in a box in the attic.

  6) The public ceremony in which your distinguished ancestor participated and at which the platform collapsed under him turned out to be a hanging.

  7) When at last after much hard work you have evolved the mystery that you have been working on for two years, your aunt says, "I could have told you that."

  8) John, son of Thomas the immigrant whom your relatives claim as the family progenitor, died on board ship at the age of 10.

  9) The relative who had all the family photographs gave them all to her daughter who has no interest in genealogy and no inclination to share.

  10) and finally....Your great grandfather's newspaper obituary states that he died leaving no issue of record.