If you come across some humour, please let us know. In the meantime, enjoy:

Links provided by Penny Lane:

http://milin.net/genealogy/genealog/Letsuse/witnwisdom.html

http://members.home.nl/sjouwke/genealogie/jokes.htm#looking%20for%20an%20ancestor

Our thanks to Penny Lane who found the Hydenwell New Years Resolutions published in a genealogical newsletter, for Collins County, Gen Society, in Texas. She notes that the person who posted it said the author was unknown. Penny also did a google search and found it by typing Henry Hydenwell. She reports that it also was published on rootsweb in 2005 and a hundred and one other places. It appears this is floating about all over the place! That being said, here it is for the descendants of the Remsheg Loyalists who might believe that their forebears used the same resolutions!

1852 NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS SOLVE GENEALOGICAL MYSTERIES.

It is New Year's Eve 1852 and Henry HYDENWELL sits at his desk by candlelight. He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to writes his New Year's resolutions.

1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his family name at least three different ways within the same document. I resolve to give the appearance of being extremely well-educated in the coming year.

2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same proper names that my ancestors have used for at least six generations in a row.

3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document.

4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church -- either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will not be baptized at all or will be baptized by an itinerant minister who keeps no records.

5. I resolve to move to a new town, new county, or new state at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions.

6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and towns where no vital records are maintained or where the courthouse burns down every few years.

7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.

8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.

9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary and again make no mention of her family name.

10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer?

11. I resolve to leave lots of family photographs, but never to inscribe the names or relationships of those in the pictures.

12. In the above manner, I will enshrine myself and my progeny to the whims of all those descendants who wish me to be more like they believe they are.