“The sacrifice our ancestors gave yesterday
Gave us today and our tomorrow”
Source: Selina's Letter, Tales of Suicide from Victorian and Edwardian London
“My charge, then, in putting down my pen, and giving over this work to posterity, is this: Take the time. Take the time to preserve the stories, the photographs, the small mementos that mean so much. This is your legacy to future generations. Give it the attention it deserves. Your children and your grandchildren will thank you for it.”
Source: One Immigrant's Legacy: The Overmyer Family in America, 1751-2009: A Biographical Record of Revolutionary War Veteran Capt. John George Overmire and His Descendants
“Just like our ancestors, we too will fall out of living memory and be forgotten.
It will take a future genealogist to find us again.
Make it a good find.”
“She listens to the history of her painting read aloud in court and finds it hard to associate her portrait, the little painting that has hung serenely on her bedroom wall, with such trauma, such globally significant events.”
Source: The Last Letter from Your Lover
“Ultimately, the great truths of family history don't live in any book. They live in the hearts and minds of the living descendants. They live in the way we conduct our lives, in the passing of traditions and values to those who will follow.”
Source: A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey
“All of us are part of a beautiful pageantry of human experience. Let us make the most of this life in all we do.”
Source: A Revolutionary American Family: The McDonalds of Somerset County, New Jersey
“We are the accumulation of the dreams of generations”
“Unable to record their stories, they told tales of bravery and battles, around blazing fires, and sang songs about bountiful harvests and village heroes as they went about their daily work. These stories and songs were passed down from generation to generation, preserving their history, keeping memories alive.”
Source: Lanark County Calling: All Roads Lead Home
“When we see what blood we spill, we call out to the gods, but they have forsaken us. We shout to the ancestors; only the sound of the waters answers back. We are left to the mercy which we have for each other.”
Source: Naming the New World: A Novel
“When a writer is born into a family, Czesław Miłosz once famously said, the family is finished. You could forget about having any more secrets. You could forget about hiding what you didn’t want others to know. You were going to be exposed, hung out to air, and by a traitor from within. But later I wondered, Is it the family that’s really finished or simply the writer’s place within it? Could a family still be a family with parts missing?”
Source: The Latter Days: A Memoir