genhumor

MURPHY'S LAWS OF FAMILY HISTORY

The keeper of the vital records you need will just have been insulted by another genealogist.

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Your great-grandfather's obituary states that he died, leaving no issue of record.

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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.

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That ancient photograph of four relatives, one of whom is your progenitor, carries the names of the other three.

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Copies of old newspapers have holes which occur only on maiden names.

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No one in your family tree ever did anything noteworthy, always rented property, was never sued, and was never named in wills.

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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."

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Ink fades and paper deteriorates at a rate inversely proportional to the value of the data recorded.

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The critical link in your family tree is named "Smith."

OCUPAYSHUN:
"CENSUS TAKER"

I am a census taker for the city of Lundin. Our city has groan very fast in resent years and now in 1865, it has become a hard and time consuming job to count all the peepill. There are not many that con do this werk, as it is nesessarie to have an ejucashun, wich a lot of pursons still do not have.

Anuther atribeart needed for this job is gud spelling, for meny of the pepill to be counted can hardlee speek inglish, let alon spel thare names.