Genealogy Humor
*Who's
in charge of washing the Family Group Sheets?
*Old
genealogist never die, they just lose their census.
*If
only ancestors came with pull-down menus and on-line help...
* This hobby is "GENEALOGY". If you sit down and study one tombstone for 30 minutes, that's "GEOLOGY".
*
"Some family trees have beautiful leaves,
*New
mail not found. Start whine-pout sequence? (Y/N)
*Time
flies! Genealogists are the navigators!
*Only
a genealogist regards a step backwards as progress.
*I
should have asked them BEFORE they died!
*We
shall find no ancestor before his time.
*"Why
waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your
opponents will do it for you!" -- Mark Twain
*Searching
for lost relatives? Just win the Lottery!
*50%
of my forefathers were female.
*Can
a first cousin, once removed, return?
*
Of course, a miser is hard to live with, but he sure makes a
fine ancestor!
*He
ain't heavy--He's my brother's aunt's sister's husband.
*
After 30 days unclaimed ancestors will be adopted.
*
Any family tree produces some lemons, nuts and bad apples.
*
Try genealogy. You can't get fired and you can't quit!
*
"Sure, a real job would be nice, but it would interfere with
my genealogy!"
*I
don't believe it! My Birth Certificate expired?
*What
do you mean my grandparents didn't have any kids?
*
Genealogy is like Hide & Seek: They Hide & I Seek!!!!
*
Whoever said Seek and Ye shall find was NOT a genealogist!
*
"I think that I shall never see a completed Genealogy!"
*
If it's only a hobby, why do I feel so stressed out?
*I'm
not stuck, I'm ancestrally challenged
*
BATTLE CRY -- "Take all of the ancestors, leave only the records!"
*
Genealogy is contagious, seldom fatal!
*
Genealogy is not fatal, but it is a grave disease!
*With
MY luck, my family tree has root rot!
*
Genealogy: Collecting dead relatives and sometimes a live cousin!
*
Genealogy: Tracing descent from someone who didn't.
*
Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.
*
"I didn't really want to get into genealogy! Kept putting it off!
When I started within six weeks I had my father narrowed down to one of three or
four people!"
*
How can one ancestor cause so much TROUBLE?
*
It's hard to be humble with ancestors like mine!
*
It is hereditary in my
family not to have children.
*
Quaker pickup line: "Are thee at barn raisings often?"
*
Others work from sun to sun! But a genealogists work is never done!!
*
Genealogists do it generation after generation.
*
Genealogists do it off the record
*
Genealogists do it for the memories
*
Genealogists do it in the library.
*
Genealogists never lose their jobs, they just go to another branch!
*
Genealogists should also consider the handsome neighbor...
*
Genealogists never die, they just loose their roots.
*
Genealogists never die, they just haunt archives.
*
Genealogists never die ... they just haunt cemeteries.
*
Genealogists never die, they just get filed away.
*
Computer Genealogy: working out where your computer came from.
*
*
*
The keeper of the vital records you need will have just been insulted by another
genealogist.
*
Your great-grandfather's obituary states that he died, leaving no issue of
record.
*
The town clerk you wrote to in desperation, and finally convinced to give you
the information you need, can't write legibly, and doesn't have a copying
machine.
*
That ancient photograph of four relatives, one of whom is your progenitor,
carries the names of the other three.
*
Copies of old newspapers have holes which occur only on maiden and surnames.
*
No one in your family tree ever did anything noteworthy, always rented property,
was never sued, and was never named in Wills.
*
You learned that Great aunt Matilda's executor just sold her life's collection
of family genealogical materials to a flea market dealer "somewhere in New
York City."
*
Yours is the ONLY last name not found among the billions in the LDS archives in
Salt Lake City.
*
Ink fades and paper deteriorates at a rate inversely proportional to the value
of the data recorded.
*
Anything that could have burned, did.
*
The census taker with the clear handwriting and good ink never enumerated your
ancestors.
*
If you find a well-documented, illustrious ancestor, you've probably made a
mistake.
*
Your folks hated government and never filled out forms.
*
The book you need is never indexed, or, if indexed, doesn't include people.
*
Your families never had attics, much less Bibles or boxes full of photos.
*
All real library "finds" are made five minutes before closing, when
the copier is broken.
*
The correctly shelved books and correctly filed forms are never the ones you
need.
*
The person sitting next to you at the research center is finding ancestors every
five minutes...and telling you.
*
The e-mail address that bounces is the one from a person who listed your exact
names. If you find a working address, you aren't related.
*
Your microfilm reader is the one that squeaks, has to be turned backwards, and
doesn't quite focus.
*
Your cemeteries have no caretaker or records archive.
*
Alternate spellings and arcane names were your folks' favorite past times.
*
Your ancestors only knew three names, and used them over and over in every
collateral line.
*
Your sister neglects to mention that the date she gave you, which you have
researched, and sent to other researchers, was just a guess with no foundation,
and she guessed because she "didn't like leaving that line blank."
*
Your mother neglects to mention that, "Oh, yes, we knew they changed their
name.
*
The critical link in your family tree is named "Smith."
*
The document containing evidence of the missing link in your research invariably
will be lost due to fire, flood or war.
*
The Will you need is in the safe on board the "Titanic".
*
The spelling of your European ancestor's name bears no relationship to its
current spelling or pronunciation.
*
The 37 volume, sixteen-thousand-page history of your county of origin isn't
indexed.
*
The blot on the page of the census covers your grandmother's birthdate!
*
Your ancestor's Will leaves his estate to his beloved wife and children but he
doesn't name them.
*
The only overturned, face-down gravestone in the cemetery is your great-great
grandfather's!
*
The information you desperately need could be only found in an 1890 census?
*
You finally find your ancestor's obituary in an old newspaper and all it says is
"Died last week."
* You finally get a day off from work to travel to a courthouse -- and when you get there it's closed for emergency plumbing repairs.
ACTUAL EPITAPHS FROM
GRAVESTONES
Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903-Died 1942
Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the
car was on the way down.
It was.
******************************
In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:
Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up
And no place to go.
******************************
In a Georgia cemetery:
"I told you I was sick!"
******************************
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East
Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
The Good Die Young.
******************************
In a London, England cemetery:
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
******************************
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
Anna Wallace:
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the Lord sent them manna.
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
******************************
Playing with names in a Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me
For not rising.
******************************
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, cemetery:
Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
******************************
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch.
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger
But slow on the draw.
******************************
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
******************************
Someone determined to be anonymous in Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business of yours.
******************************
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona,
in the cowboy days of the 1880s. He's buried in the Boot Hill
Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore.
Four slugs from a .44.
No Les; No More.
******************************
John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
Reader, if cash thou art
In want of any,
Dig 4 feet deep;
And thou wilt find a Penny.
******************************
On Margaret Daniel's grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
She always said her feet were killing her, but nobody believed her.
******************************
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle
Went out of tune.
******************************
Anna Hopewell's grave in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, has an epitaph
that sounds like something from a Three Stooges movie:
Here lies the body of our Anna -
Done to death by a banana.
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low,
But the skin of the thing that made her go.
******************************
More fun with names with Owen Moore in Battersea, London, England:
Gone away
Owin' more
Than he could pay.
******************************
On a grave from the 1880s in Nantucket, Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod.
Pease shelled out and went to God.
******************************
The grave of Ellen Shannon in Girard, Pennsylvania, is almost a
consumer tip:
Who was fatally burned March 21, 1870, by the explosion of a
lamp filled with "R.E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid"
******************************
In a cemetery in England:
Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so shall you be.
Remember this and follow me.
To which someone replied by writing on the tombstone:
To follow you I'll not consent
Until I know which way you went
Compliments of various
genealogists.