Thank you to everyone who leaves tokens of remembrance for my memorials overall, especially my loved ones.

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Remember that these deceased souls deserve respect, even in death. Sometimes the competitiveness of fellow FG contributors is baffling. These memorials we create are not playing cards to swap. I will never understand or agree with creating memorials for souls that are still living. A FG contributor should not come across a memorial for their loved one, who died in 2021, but the loved one's memorial is dated, created in 2010. For me the volume of how many memorials my account has created means nothing. Unfortunately, to some contributors that number is life. Truly sad. I know the profile police will most definitely delete this statement but deleting doesn't make my comment any less true. As fellow contributors, we should be able to dialogue with one another in a respectful way, for the good of souls being respectfully remembered on FG.

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We are the chosen. In each family, there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts, but instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe.

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Dear Ancestor,

Your tombstone stands among the rest;

Neglected and alone.

The name and the date are chiseled out

On polished, marbled stone.

It reaches out to all who cares

It is too late to mourn.

You did not know that I exist

You died and I was born.

Yet each of us are cells of you

In flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse

Entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled

One hundred years ago

Spreads out among the ones you left

Who would have loved you so.

I wonder if you lived and loved,

I wonder if you knew

That someday I would find this spot,

And come to visit you.

Author Unknown

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SURNAMES:

MATERNAL:

Brown, Carpenter, Goodall, Gwynn, Harris, Helton, Johnson, Smith, Solomon, Strother, Tyree/Tyre, Wheeler, White

Ties in Albemarle County, VA (Stony Point), Madison County, VA, Charlottesville, VA, Ardmore PA, Maryland, Washington DC

PATERNAL:

Blackburn (somehow our surname Blackburn turned into- Blagmon/Blagman), Croucher, Davis, Holmes, Johnson, Jones, Lee, Lindsey, Morton, Parrish, Rich, Richardson, Wright, Young

Ties in Caroline County, VA & Essex Co., VA, Gloucester Co., VA, Goochland Co., VA, Mathews, Co., VA, Burlington, NJ, Philadelphia, PA