if you are trying to search your family tree
By enola1692
@enola1692 (3323)
United States
September 29, 2009 1:31pm CST
Rules for our ancestors
-OR-
How to confuse your descendants
(1) Thou shalt name your male children: James, John, Joseph, Josiah, Abel, Richard, Thomas, William.
(2) Thou shalt name your female children: Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Maria, Sarah, Ida, Virginia, May.
(3) Thou shalt leave NO trace of your female children.
(4) Thou shalt, after naming your children from the above lists, call them by strange nicknames such as: Ike, Eli, Polly, Dolly, Sukey.---making them difficult to trace.
(5) Thou shalt NOT use any middle names on any legal documents or census reports, and only where necessary, you may use only initials on legal documents.
(6)Thou shalt learn to sign all documents illegibly so that your surname can be spelled, or misspelled, in various ways: Hicks, Hicks, Hix, Hixe, Hucks, Kicks.
(7) Thou shalt, after no more then 3 generations, make sure that all family records are lost, misplaced, burned in a court house fire, or buried so that NO future trace of them can be found.
(8) Thou shalt propagate misleading legends, rumors, & vague innuendo regarding your place origination.
(A) you may have come from : England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales....or Iran.
(B) you may have American Indian ancestry of the______tribe. .....
(C) You may have descended from one of three brothers that came over from______
(9) Thou shalt leave NO cemetery records, or headstones with legible names.
(10) Thou shalt leave NO family Bible with records of birth, marriages, or deaths.
(11) Thou shalt ALWAYS flip thy name around. If born James Albert, thou must make all the rest of thy records in the names of Albert, AJ, JA, AL, Bert, Bart, or Alfred.
(12) Thou must also flip thy parent's names when making reference to them, although "Unknown" or a blank line is an acceptable alternative.
(13) Thou shalt name at least 5 generations of males, and dozens of their cousins with identical names in order to totally confuse researchers.
1 response
@Wizzywig (7847)
•
29 Sep 09
Oh, yes... my family seem to have followed a few of those commandments!
I have generations of William; John; James and Samuel... Elizabeth; Ann (Anne); Mary...
I searched for years for an Alfred who, it now transpires was a James Alfred at birth but had swapped the names round by the time he married and there are umpteen variations of Mowles;Moles;Moules;Mowells not to mention a whole clump of Smiths. Most of them also lived in small farming communities so were all farm labourers except for a brief forray into shoemaking for a couple of generations of one small branch and there are no photos.
Maybe they just didnt want us to know???
@enola1692 (3323)
• United States
29 Sep 09
Tell me about it it gets worse with me on my grandma's side I think every other girl is a theresa an on my grandfathers don't laugh but he was born on an idian resivation an he has brothers an sisters with names like haunted wind, squatting dog, running bull an when they changed thier names they changed them to eugene , joseph an of course mary an more theresa's anyway I still can't find all of them hanging from his tree


