Why I accepted the challenge to Write about my family

"The McCrackens of Texas and Other Nuts "

  

 Pride of ancestry is not merely a fad.  Neither is it ancestral worship.  An anonymous writer in the Journal of American History has expressed a sentiment that is perhaps universal among civilized people.

Says he:  “To read genealogy may be to thinking and reflective mind like walking in a cemetery and reading the inscriptions on the grave stones.  Each of the names in the table of one, or on the stone in the other, is only a memorial---perhaps the only memorial ---of a human heart that once lived and loved;  a heart that kept its pulsations through some certain periods of time and then ceased to beat and has mouldered into dust.  Each had its joys and sorrows, its cares and burdens, its opportunities wasted or improved, and its hour of death.  Each of these dates of birth, marriage, death, oh, how significant!  What a day was each of these dates to some human family, or to some circle of loving, human hearts!  And the presence of death drives the mind to thoughts of immortality.  Memorials of the dead are memorials not of death alone but of life also.  They died, therefore they had lived.  And as the mind thinks of the dead gethered to their fathers, it can not but think of the unseen world which they inhabit.

“All these names are memorials of human spirits that have passed from time that flows between, walk the brave men and beautiful women of our ancestry, grouped in twilight upon the shores.  Distance smoothes away defeats, and, with gentle darkness, rounds every form into grace.  It steals the harshness from their speech, and every word becomes a song.  Far across the gulf that ever widens they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and which lights us to success.  We acknowledge our inheritance, we accept our birthright, and we own that their careers have pledged us to noble action.  Every great life is an incentive to all other lives.”

What shall be said, then, about the perpetuatiopn of memorials?  Must we keep green the memory of those who have lived, left a record, and have gone before us?

After all, “If a man die, shall he live again?”  Surley in more senses than Job meant.   Memorials and minumints are fleeting if we compare time with eternity, but the inscriptions that are written in the hearts of men endure through the ages.

So with the family tree if it be worthy.

Allen, W. C.. The annals of Haywood county, North Carolina: historical, sociological, biographical, and genealogical. S.l.: s.n.] ., 1935. Print. pp275-276.

From the time I can remember, ancestors have been important to me.  I knew my great grandparents and had a sense of who they were as individuals and how the two sides of my family came to be linked together. That is, I thought I knew. My father had a book that has been passed from my great-grandfather to my dad and I was always surprised to find our surname in the book and information about the McCracken family.  That was not a common surname in this area, so looking through the eyes of an eight year old and seeing the story in print made me feel special.  My mother, too, had information, although not printed in a book, but it was real just the same.
Following the untimely death of my brother, Paul, this past spring, and my cousin's son, my mother and uncle have urged our family to set a date for our fourth official family reunion.  My daughters and I finally took the bull by the horns and set a date, rented a house and informed the rest of the family. As a special treat for my family, I decided to learn as much as I could about our family history and present my findings at the reunion.
Armed with my various family trees, pictures, and a great ambition, I set a goal to visit the National Archives here in Fort Worth every Wednesday during the summer.  I also set every Thursday to go to the Family Search Center.  I met that goal and found myself wishing for more summer and less school year.  I found records to document the information that I already had, cemetery archives, and even the courage to write to Georgia for a copy of a will, hoping to prove my great-great grandfather's death.  My information grew from a spiral notebook to four three ring binders documenting relatives on both sides of my family.  I have discovered that if I want to delve further into the maternal side of my mother's family, I will need to learn German.

Currently there are 781 people in my family tree from including both sides of my family.