The Story Tellers ....

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, a breathing of life into all who have gone before. Those who have gone before cry out, tell our story. So, we do.

To tell them they have a wonderful family they would be so proud of. To shed heartfelt tears over their grave. To feel love from someone who has gone before. It is more then just a documenting of facts. It is who we are and why we do the things we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. Their bones are bones of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

It's about the pride we have in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It is about respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family, OUR family. It is about an immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do.

With love and caring and scribing of each fact of their existence, we are them and they are us. So, as a scribe called, we tell the story of our family and step up and put flesh on the bones.

I dedicate this site to all of the great story tellers who came before me...

Nancy Cunningham                                                                 7/20/2002