This is a constant work in progress.  There are so many names and so little time.  We have the following surnames: RICHARDSON, PIERCE, LUTZKE, BLANK, JANSE, JENSEN FIRES (FIERS), BROWER, BOGARDUS, KITZMILLER, LAUDE, LE CLEUR, MC DONALD, WATTERS, BONNER, GORST, FORSTER, FREESTONE, APPLETON, SCHIFFMAN, SCHWAB, SYKES, ZEUG, ZIEG, ZEIG, ZENG, MC BURNEY, MILLER, SMITH, and WILDMAN, just to name a few.  We have some documented history and some from word of mouth from ancestors.  There is always more to learn of our family and more to document.  All sources will greatly be appreciated and any help that we may give is always a joy.  Look forward to finding more relatives.

I want to thank all of the people who have helped to put this together and for their diligent work on researching.  They have helped to find information that had been missing and have really been a great help.  They may not want their names mentioned, but you know who you are.  I thank you so much.  This tree seems to be growing with all your help.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Genealogy Humor
 "I Want"
 By Barbara A. Brown *

Yep -- I want ancestors with names like Rudimentary Montagnard or Melchizedick von Steubenhoffmannschild or Spetznatz Gianfortoni, not William Brown or John Hunter or Mary Abbott.

I want ancestors who could read and write, had their children baptized in recognized houses of worship, went to school, purchased land, left detailed wills (naming a huge extended family as legatees), had their photographs taken once a year -- subsequently putting said pictures in elaborate isinglass frames annotated with calligraphic inscriptions, and carved voluble and informative inscriptions in their headstones. I want relatives who managed to bury their predecessors in established, still-extant (and indexed) cemeteries.

I want family members who wrote memoirs, who enlisted in the military as officers and who served in strategically important (and well documented) skirmishes. I want relatives who served as councilmen, schoolteachers, county clerks and town historians. I want relatives who 'religiously' wrote in the family Bible, journaling every little event and detailing the familial relationship of every visitor.

In the case of immigrant progenitors, I want them to have arrived only in those years wherein passenger lists were indexed by National Archives, and I want them to have applied for citizenship, and to have done so only in those jurisdictions which have since established indices.

I want relatives who were patriotic and clubby, who joined every patrimonial society they could find, who kept diaries, and listed all their addresses, who had paintings made of their horses, and who dated every piece of paper they touched. I want forebears who were wealthy enough to afford, and to keep for generations, the tribal homestead, and who left all the aforementioned pictures and diaries and journals intact in the library.

    But most of all, I want relatives I can find!!!

    © Barbara A. Brown

* Ms. Brown's "I Want" article was originally posted in 1994 to the National Genealogical Conference, FIDO bulletin board forum.