About My Tangled Roots
Please sign in to see more. WE ARE 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 storytellers 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 am I and why do 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 whom we had never known before
A lot of thanks goes out to my daughter Angie Artis / Drake who has been a great helper throughout
the years, also thanks to Cristy Sheehan who has provided me with picture's and information on the
Meginness side who traveled across the midwest states & settled on the West Coast. |