21 December 2006

The One Question I Hate

There are few genealogy questions I do not like.

The one that always frustrates me is "are you related to anyone famous?" Occasionally this is phrased as "do you have any famous ancestors?" Of course, the goal of genealogy is to locate as many famous relatives as possible. Uh huh. While I do have fun locating famous people in the census, locating them is not as much fun as locating actual relatives. Most of my relatives were farmers, with the occasional artisan and laborer thrown in. There were a few ministers, but one has to go back three hundred years to find them.

I am not related to any presidents, but that is probably just as well. I am related to Adam and Eve, but they did not live in the Garden of Eden. They lived north of Hamilton in a stone house. I'm not certain if they had an apple tree or not.