Genealogy Quotes

“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.”
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From

“History is the essence of innumerable biographies.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“... the pursuit of origins is a way of rescuing territory from death and oblivion, a reconquest that ought to be patient, devoted, relentless and faithful.”
― Amin Maalouf, Orígenes

“All of our ancestors give us the precious gift of life. Do we use it wisely? Do we use it well? Do we make a name for ourselves and for our children of which we can be proud?”
― Laurence Overmire, A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey

“Every family's its own trip to China.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

“I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth.

I almost prefer the more rambling and indirect and journalistic investigation, which seems somehow less… deterministic.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Why bother taking a DNA Test to discover your genealogy? Just go buy a lottery ticket, and if you win, all your distant relatives will find you.”
― Jarod Kintz, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“The story of his great-grandfather . . . was his own story, too.”
― Kelly Cherry, The Exiled Heart: A Meditative Autobiography

“Nuclear didn't describe families. How could it? Dry physics was not equal to that task. In the twentieth century we needed a biological metaphor, Darwinian in scope, to suggest the gnash and crash of carnivorous life in the family gene pool. But for the 21st century, the new century, I think the metaphors must be chemical. Molecular. In the molecular family people are connected without being bound. They spindle themselves around shared experiences and affections rather than splashing in the shared gene pool.”
― Laura Kalpakian, Steps and Exes: A Novel of Family

“Every life holds an epic tale, even if no one alive remembers it.”
― Greg Melville, Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries

“Irish genealogy is easy,' Grenham reassured us 'given the fact that so much of it was blown up.”
― Buzzy Jackson, Shaking the Family Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist

“This time their kiss would last for generations.”
― Mari Collier, Thalia and Earth

“Every generation adds another link to the chain that we call history.”
― David J. Forsyth, Alice and The Machine Gunner

“The Story Tellers: We are the chosen ones.
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. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We
have been called as it were by our genes.
Those who have gone before crying out to us: Tell our story! So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors you have a wonderful family? You would be proud of us! How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.
It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, they’re never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.”
― Della Joann McGinnis Johnson

“We are the chosen ones.
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. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one.
We have been called as it were by our genes,
Those who have gone before crying out to us: Tell our story! So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors you have a wonderful family? You would be proud of us! How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.
It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, they’re never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers.
Excerpt from the poem The Story Tellers attributed to Della Joann McGinnis Johnson”
― Della Joann McGinnis Johnson

“DNA opens an even more mysterious door to understanding the human condition: all of our ancestors live within each one of us whether we are aware of it or not.”
― Laurence Overmire, The One Idea That Saves The World: A Message of Hope in a Time of Crisis

“I've been waiting a long time for this. Hi ... I'm your Aunt Cassie.”
― Craig Harris, Memoirs of an Adoptee: One person's DNA discoveries, reflections and insights

“She can't help. No one can. I rest my head in my hands and let the flood of hot angry tears fall. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the enormity of it all. She lied to me, probably lied to my dad too.
The hole in my heart doubles in size like I'm losing him all over again.....Although it seems he was never mine to lose.”
― Alison Hammer, Little Pieces of Me

“I clicked the obituary, my heart pounding.
" 'Alice Roussard passed away on February 8, 2008. She was 87,' " I read.
Caterina tapped her fingers against the desk. "Bingo."
" 'Alice is survived by her husband Benjamin and three daughters,' " I continued. " 'Lisette Greenfeld of Kansas City, KS; Vi Lipniki of Poughkeepsie, NY; and Rosaline Warner of Saint Louis, MO.' "
"Ha! No wonder you were having trouble getting anywhere with Roussard. Benjamin had three daughters, all of whom changed their names."
"Well, now we've got them."
"Saint Louis is within driving distance, Etta. If we found a number or e-mail for Rosaline..."
"It's certainly worth a try," I said, clicking to a new browser window. I typed in Rosaline Warner's name and hit Enter.
"Would you look at that," Cat said when we reviewed the results.
I couldn't help but chuckle as well. Link after link featured Rosaline Warner, the James Beard Award-winning pastry chef and proprietress of the Feisty Baguette. "Genetics," I said. "They'll getcha every time.”
― Hillary Manton Lodge, Together at the Table

“Beware of going down that rabbit hole. You may find yourself eaten by the rabbit at the end of your chase.”
― ~ PT Huedlach

“skeletons in the closet can be found everywhere. They may seem shocking initially, but they will be a colorful addition to any welcomed genealogist.
- Jacquelyn Nicholson, Genealogy Made Easy, 2nd Edition”
― Jacquelyn Nicholson

“...[T]hose now in the grave... once held her in their arms as their hope and the hope of their house...”
― John Polidori, The Vampyre

“Ancestry is Garbage (The Sonnet)

DNA test may reveal your ancestry,
But there is no DNA test for character.
IQ may reveal deficit in logical aptitude,
There's no IQ test for excellence or genius.

If bloodline dictated destiny,
We'd still be dangling from trees.
Not that we've done much better,
But at least there is possibility.

In the end we are all monkeys,
We all come from the jungle.
Question is, have we conquered
the jungle that lurks in our heart,
have we risen yet above the animal!

Ancestry is garbage, IQ is useless,
Living humans don't rely on such nonsense.
Heart, brain, backbone, these make who we are,
Everything else is mythology of the savages.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“DNA test may reveal your ancestry, but there is no DNA test for character.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“But who took the Elder Houses seriously any longer? Most of the current members saw it as nothing more than a genealogical resource and an excuse for the occasional gala.”
― Claudia Gray, Bloodline

“The method I propose to explore in this book is designed to help us look at ideas from a practical point of view—to look at what ideas do rather than at whether the judgements they figure in are true—in order to see how exactly our ideas are bound up with our needs and concerns. This method, which I propose to call pragmatic genealogy, consists in telling partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these ideas do for us. What point do they serve? What is the salient useful difference these ideas make to the lives of those who live by them? Much as an archaeologist who digs up a mysterious relic will try to reverse-engineer its point by imaginatively reconstructing the life of those who used it and hypothesizing what useful difference it might have made to that life, we can take an abstract idea whose point eludes us, such as truth, knowledge, or justice, and try to explain why we came to think in these terms by reconstructing the practical problems that these ideas offer practical solutions to. A pragmatic genealogy answers the question of why we came to think as we do by reverse-engineering the points of ideas, tracing them to their practical origins, and revealing what they do for us when they function well.”
― Matthieu Queloz

“When you teach your kids the genealogy of Bible characters but not the genealogy of their natural family, you destroy their roots.”
― Chidi Ejeagba

“Enjoy Your Journey
One Word At A Time
Capturing The Moment Given On The Page”
― Carol Fuller @ Piedmont Trails