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YOU KNOW YOU ARE AN ADDICTED GENEALOGIST WHEN.....   ..you brake for libraries.   ..you get locked in a library overnight and you don't even notice.   ..you hyper-ventillate at the sight on an old cemetery.   ..you'd rather browse in a cemetery than a shopping mall.   ..you think every home should have a microfilm reader.   ..you'd rather read census schedules than a good book.   ..you know every town clerk in your state by name.   ..town clerks lock the doors when they see you coming.   ..you are more interested in what happened in 1895 than 1995.   ..you store your clothes under the bed and your closet is carefuly stacked with notebooks and journals.   ..Mitchell, Davis, and Tenney are household names, but you can't remember what you call the dog.   ..you can pinpoint Harrietsham, Hawkhurst, and Kent on a map of England, but can't locate Topeka, Kansas.   ..ALL your correspondence begins "Dear Cousin".   ..you've traced every one of your ancestral lines back to Adam and Eve, have it fully documented, and still don't want to quit.

MURPHY WAS AN OPTIMIST! HE KNEW THAT ANYTHING THAT CAN GO WRONG ~ WILL GO WRONG!! MURPHY'S LAW OF GENEALOGY STATES THAT:   The records you need for your family history were in the courthouse that burned.   John, son of Thomas, the immigrant whom your relatives claim as the immigrant ancestor, died on board ship at the age of twelve.   The public ceremony, in which your distinguished ancestor participated when the platform collapsed, turned out to be a hanging.   Records show that the grandfather, whom the family boasted, "He read the Bible at four years and graduated from college at sixteen," was at the foot of his class.   Your grandmother's maiden name for which you've searched for years, was on an old letter in a box in the attic all the time.   When at last you solved the mystery of the skeleton in the closet, your tight-lipped spinster aunt claims, "I could have told you that all the time."   You never asked your father about his family because you weren't interested in genealogy while he was still alive.   The family story your grandmother wrote for the family never got past the typist.  She packed it away "somewhere" and promised to send you a copy, but never did.   The relative who had all the family photographs gave them to her daughter who had no interest in genealogy and no inclination to share.   A great-uncle changed his surname because he was teased in school.  He moved away, left no address, and was never heard from again.   Brittle old newspapers containing the information you NEED, have fallen apart, right on the names, dates and places.   The only record you find for your great-grandfather is that his property was sold at a sheriff's sale for insolvency.   The portion of the index you need is continued in the next issue, only the  publisher died prior to publication.   When  you find the obituary for your grandmother, the information is garbled.  Her name is exchanged with her daughter's, the whereabouts of her sons unknown, and the date of her father's birth indicates he was younger than she was.   The ONLY surname not found among the three billion in the LDS Archives is YOURS.   The Vital Records director sends you a negative reply, having just been insulted by a creep calling himself a genealogist.   The four-volume, 4,800 page history of the county where your great-grandfather lived is NOT indexed.

THE COMMANDMENTS FOR NAMES A "Tongue-In-Cheek" Viewpoint of a Family Researcher: (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, Hix, Hixe, Hucks, Kicks or Robinson, Robertson, Robison, Roberson, Robuson, Robson, Dobson. (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, and vague innuendo regarding your place origination: (A) you may have come from : Europe, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales... (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. (Author unknown)   Additions to the original list:     14.  You shall read "Unk Friend" (or whatever) as Uncle Friend (or whatever) and cause a new complete and totally unfounded branch (Fanny's your uncle, Robert's your aunt) in thousands of peoples' files. ~ Art Grady 15.  Thou shalt take in children from other families and without formally adopting them, change their last name to yours. ~ Ruth Koontz 16.  Don't forget Uncle or Aunt STILLBO ('stillbo' is used as abbrev. for child that was stillborn - I had a lady contact me and ask if I had any info on a specific surname for Stillbo). ~ Ruth sprowls 17.  Thou shall name a child the same name as a previous deceased child. ~ Dave Fochtman 18.  Thou shalt name your child the same name as your brother's child that was born the same year. ~ Karen McCunney 19.  Thou shalt marry two women with the same first name. ~ "Soulmate". 20.  Thou shalt only marry a man named JONES if your surname is SMITH or vice versa. ~ Karen Hangsleben 21.  Immigration officials must change all immigrants names to reflect a spelling more convenient. And - my favorite 22.  For immigration purposes, all countries can be lumped together (i.e. England, Scotland, Wales and both Irelands are simply England). ~ Theresa