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The Laws of Genealogy
The document containing
evidence of the missing link in your research invariably will be
lost due to fire, flood, or war.
The keeper of the vital
records you need will just have been insulted by another
genealogist.
Your great, great
grandfather's obituary states that he died leaving no issue of
record.
The town clerk you wrote in
desperation, and finally convinced to give to you the information
you need, can't write legibly, and doesn't have a copying machine.
The will you need is in the
safe on board the "Titanic."
The spelling of your
European ancestor's name bears no relationship to its current
spelling or pronunciation.
That ancient photograph of
four relatives, one of whom is your progenitor, carries the names of
the other three.
Copies of old newspapers
have holes which only occur on last names.
No one in your family tree
ever did anything noteworthy, always rented property, was never
sued, and was never named in wills.
You learned that great aunt
Matilda's executor just sold her life's collection of family
genealogical materials to a flea market dealer "somewhere in
New York City
."
Yours is the ONLY last name
not found among the three billion in the world-famous Mormon
archives in
Salt Lake City
.
Ink fades and paper
deteriorates at a rate inversely proportional to the value of the
data recorded.
The 37-volume,
sixteen-thousand-page history of your county of origin isn't
indexed.
The critical link in your
family tree is named "Smith."
Author Unknown
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